A new level of X/Twitter chicanery at the MLB Trade Deadline has emerged.

New York Mets v Philadelphia Phillies / Mitchell Leff/GettyImages

Whenever the MLB Trade Deadline rolls around, you always have to be on your toes as baseball fans. There are loads upon loads of erroneous accounts on social media who will “report” fake news when they actually have no sources. Frankly, it’s annoying and something you have to learn to weed through.

But what about when a respected MLB insider is the one tweeting out erroneous nonsense about trades? That can fool some fans pretty quickly. And such was the case on Monday with ESPN insider Buster Olney.

Olney was very clearly hacked on X/Twitter as there were cryptocurrency promotions and a song posted along with some truly strange, senseless messages. But then came the ones that were destined to fool some people. The hacker then posted that the Chicago White Sox had traded start outfielder Luis Robert Jr. to the Philadelphia Phillies before another post “reporting” that the New York Mets had traded Francisco Lindor to the Oakland Athletics.

Buster Olney hacker riles up Phillies, Mets fans with erroneous trade reports

Given the names connected and the huge fanbases for both the Phillies and Mets with these tweets coming from Olney’s official account, it’s no shock that they racked up hundreds of thousands of views and impressions with a quickness. But again, these were completely made up by a hacker. However, if someone was unaware that Olney got hacked, then it would’ve been easy to get fooled.

When the Robert post regarding the Phillies went up, there were immediate replies of “is this the real your, or the hacker?” in regards to Olney. The Lindor trade then all but cleared that up as, while Philadelphia could actually explore such a blockbuster deal with the White Sox, the Mets sending Lindor to the A’s is a bit over the line.

That’s why were here, though, to clear things up and let you know that Robert is not on the Phillies (at least not yet) and Lindor is still on the Mets. If you were duped by the hacker, you certainly weren’t alone, but let this be a lesson to keep your eyes peeled and your head on a swivel when it comes to the MLB Trade Deadline.

And we’re also here to let you know that Shohei Ohtani has not, in fact, been banned for life from MLB. In fact, he was just recently cleared in the Ippei Mizuhara scandal!

It might not always be a hacker taking over the account of one of the world’s most prominent baseball reporters but rest assured that it’s always something and someone trying to gain some sort of meaningless clout on social media with mistruths.