Here’s the best argument I’ve read for why we should just shut up and accept anonymously sourced trade rumors in sports:

Now, obvious problem #1 is that, if that were to truly be adopted, we’d have no trade rumors ever reported. We’d have a lot less reporting on evaluation of players. There would be much, much less information out there for sports fans.

Would that be a good thing, really? If we eliminated everything but what Ambinder classifies as “On the Record,” then not only are we losing the “an A.L. front office exec says the Blue Jays want the cloning rights to Albert Pujols in exchange for Roy Halladay” stuff, but also more nuanced stories. When Evan Grant or T.R. Sullivan writes, “The Rangers are interested in Jermaine Dye,” there is no specific source that is named or alluded to…but at the end of the day, Grant or Sullivan is relying on anonymous sources just as much as the Pujols clone story guy. And that eliminates much of the value that the beat reporters can offer the fan.

Still, it seems like that these “softer” unsourced reports that clearly rely on sources cause less controversy, and I doubt that even the most dogmatic of the “don’t use anonymous sources” folks really want Jeff Wilson to avoid saying in a column that, for example, the Rangers are still looking for catching help unless he states that he got that information directly from Daniels or Thad Levine or Nolan Ryan or whomever. It is when the information is “sourced” in an indirect way that folks get bent out of shape.

But why? What harm is there in, for example, a writer quoting “an N.L. West scout” as saying that Martin Perez has the best fastball in the Texas League? And as a corollary, why can’t people understand why people quoted anonymously in these sorts of articles can’t go on the record? Scouts are going to get fired if they go on the record with their evaluations, front office types can be fined for tampering and probably don’t want their individual opinions to be public knowledge, and expecting A.J. Preller or whomever to be willing to have his name used in connection with some tidbit like that is unrealistic.

So what is really acceptable on these sorts of sourcing issues? To me, it is just a matter of knowing who the writer in question is, and judging the reliability on that…because at the end of the day, a writer who runs with bad info is ultimately going to lose credibility.

But, here’s the rub — can anyone really keep up with who’s information is good and who’s information is bad? All I know is that a lot of times the stuff attributed to anonymous sources on sports pages turn out to be wrong.