Rays Wander Franco pleads innocence

Major League Baseball has officially launched an investigation into social media posts involving Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco, one of baseball’s and the Rays’ brightest young stars, and he has been placed on the restricted list, according to a statement from the team earlier today.

On Sunday, posts went viral alleging that Franco, 22, had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl.

Here at Tampa News Force, we always get to the truth by going directly to the source, so we talked to Franco last night.

“I swear to God, she told me she was fifteen and I believed her… wait, what’s the legal age here again? 18. Shit. I thought she was 18”, he said.

For the sake of full disclosure, it’s entirely possible that this wasn’t Wander Franco, but just some guy who speaks Spanish I found walking around by Tropicana Field. I don’t know. I don’t speak Spanish. I have no idea what he was talking about. I just kind of filled in the gaps, like any good journalist would. In my defense, he was wearing a baseball cap.