MLB insider who reported incorrect Shohei Ohtani to Blue Jays news offers apology: "Sometimes reporters just get bad intel"

By now it's crystal clear that Shohei Ohtani is not going to the Toronto Blue Jays. He agreed to sign elsewhere and has put pen to paper, so he's not going to be on any flights to Toronto any time soon. Reports before he signed suggested that he was. One reporter in particular, J.P. Hoornstra, was a driving force behind these reports.

It's plain to see now that everyone was wrong about that. Ohtani was likely never close to signing a contract with Toronto, so the reporting was completely incorrect. The baseball writing world took a huge hit as a result, but Hoornstra took to his X page to explain.

He said:

"I certainly didn't wake up that morning and decide I wanted to torpedo my career or certainly anybody else's ... Whatever he was feeling Friday morning, it wasn't a done deal.

"The deal, to whatever extent he was leaning in that direction, was not done. ... At the end of the day, sometimes reporters just get bad intel. That's the risk we take by attempting to report news in this breaking news environment."

He went on to say that he doesn't expect anyone to accept his apology for the incorrect report. Blue Jays fans are likely upset that they were fooled into thinking that one of the greatest baseball players to ever live was coming to their team when he wasn't, and Hoornstra understands that.

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Shohei Ohtani did not go to the Toronto Blue Jays

Shohei Ohtani didn't go to Toronto at all.

J.P. Hoornstra wasn't the only one who believed that Shohei Ohtani was headed to the Toronto Blue Jays, but he was a primary face of the reporting. The reporting eventually had people tracking a plane they believed had Ohtani on board when in actuality, he was at home.

Eventually signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ohtani inadvertently crushed the dreams of a fan base, but through no fault of his own. From the beginning, the reigning AL MVP wanted to keep the entire thing quiet.

He even said that he might hold it against teams if they leaked that they had met with him, so there were precious few facts to go on here. He tried to keep it quiet, and inaccurate reporting led some fans to think they knew what was going on. That's not what was going on at all, though.