Despite a genuinely miserable 2013 season offensively and behind the plate, former Blue Jays C J.P. Arencibia (above, currently ensconced with the Rangers) insists “the media made me out to be a monster — I wasn’t. They changed a lot of things that I said or made up stories.” Speaking with The Star’s Brendan Kennedy Arecencibia, —-hardly a rookie when it comes to addressing his critics — claims, “I learned how much media controls things.”
Arencibia did not specify to which reporters or media outlets he was referring. Of the allegations he said were falsely reported, he mentioned only one: that he had complained to team president Paul Beeston about Hayhurst and Zaun, which he said “wasn’t even close to what happened.”
Arencibia himself was actually the source of that report, when he said in an MLB Network radio interview that he spoke to the “team president” about broadcasters “that we employ” and asked, “How do you build a fan base when everything that fans are hearing is negative?”
Though he once again declined to specify about whom or what he was speaking, Arencibia also said he considered taking legal action against some members of the media, whom he vaguely accused of defaming him.
“Of course I was over it at this point of trying to say anything because it made no difference,” he said. “For everything that I did and everything that I try to do in the community and always be a good person first, to see people just turn around and make things up. Obviously you know that there’s bad human beings in this world and I realized we had quite a few of them that I had to deal with.”
Kennedy constructively cites Arencibia hitting .133 with one home run and a .182 on-base percentage thus far in 2014. Hopefully he won’t be the victim of a similar witch hunt by the brutal DFW media.