Did Phil Rogers Fabricate Chris Young Story?

I know. It's a terrible question to ask about a newspaper, but they've fabricated a story before, never corrected it when it proved false, and in that case, like this one, they seemed to be trying to turn Chicagoans against White Sox General Manager Ken Williams. So we have to ask:

Did Tribune reporter Phil Rogers make this up?

[Brian] Anderson, then coming off a strong season in Triple A, was whom the Diamondbacks initially wanted when the Sox general manager called to talk about pitcher Javier Vazquez, who had asked for a trade. Williams told Arizona he was keeping Anderson, a first-round draft pick, and that led the parties to discuss Young, a 16th-round pick in Double A.

This paragraph comes from an Oct. 5 story ("Young Socks it to 'em") in which Phil Rogers tries to pin the blame for the Cubs' poor showing on Sox GM Ken Williams, because Chris Young, who pounded the Cubs, was once a White Sox prospect. The Tribune's malice toward Williams is clear: Having already tried, unsuccessfully, to turn Sox fans against Williams by reporting falsely that he intended to trade Mark Buehrle, this new story tries to turn Cub fans and Sox fans alike against Williams on the basis of another trade. But there is evidence that this story, too, is false.

On Oct. 6, ESPN 1000's Bruce Levine interviewed Mike Rizzo, the assistant GM of the Washington Nationals, who served as the scouting director for the D-backs when they built the current team. Levine asked Rizzo directly about the report that Anderson was the first player Arizona asked about, only to be diverted to Chris Young. He said Young had been on their board for some time and he was the key to the deal. Absolutely no mention that Anderson was a component of the deal whatsoever.

Notice Rogers doesn't cite any sources for his "information." Sox fans on the White Sox Interactive forum opened a thread on the topic and, since Rogers is known to lurk there (it's not unlike watching your own funeral, as one person after another steps to the pulpit to express a lack of confidence in your reporting), they asked Rogers outright to chime in. Who were his sources, they asked. Did he have any sources, they asked. He didn't respond.

Did Phil Rogers make it up?


Brett Ballantini contributed much to this post.