Texas Rangers Rumors: Conflicting reports regarding free agent Nick Castellanos

The Texas Rangers reportedly had a successful meeting with Nick Castellanos. Now though, there are conflicting reports whether that meeting took place.

On Monday morning we saw numerous reports regarding the Texas Rangers and free agent Nick Castellanos. Jon Morosi of MLB.com got the talks churning noting that the club was among the finalists for Castellanos. According to Morosi, this stemmed from a meeting between the two parties that left Castellanos with a good impression of the organization. Not long after, we got confirmation from Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News that Texas had “renewed contact with Castellanos as a potential RH bat”. Not to be left out, TR Sullivan who, like Morosi, works for MLB.com but focuses on Rangers coverage tweeted out a link to Morosi’s piece and added his own note that Castellanos’ agent, Scott Boras, was “pushing” the club to sign the free agent.

All that sounds pretty nailed down. The Rangers and Castellanos met. Things went well. Castellanos is a free agent still in play. However, Tuesday morning, Jeff Wilson of the Star-Telegram put out an article that has a conflicting report with a source telling him that there was no such meeting between the Rangers and Castellanos.

This is a strange development as it’s rare to have directly contradictory reports about something like a meeting. We may see two outlets disagree about how advanced talks are or whether there is interest in a player but having multiple outlets report a specific meeting took place and then another respected outlet dispute that report isn’t common.

So where do I lean? At this point, I’m inclined to side with the reports that the club did meet with Nick Castellanos. Having a national outlet like Morosi report this gives solid credibility and then having a respected local writer in Evan Grant corroborate gives me confidence that this meeting took place. Grant is really good at waiting to make sure he’s got the story correct before reporting it and I trust his sources.

This is by no means a knock on Jeff Wilson. He’s reputable as well and I have no doubt that he is reporting information from a strong source. I’m just inclined to believe that perhaps that source was incorrect in this instance or was not fully aware of the meeting details. It’s possible that this meeting didn’t take place but with Morosi, Grant and Sullivan all seemingly on the side of yes, I’m going to roll with that report for the meantime.