Is Today Aaron Harang’s Birthday? An Investigation

The official Oakland Athletics Twitter account has picked up a recent habit of wishing a happy birthday to several of its former players, and have been willing to extend this courtesy both to ex-A's who reside firmly in the Some Guys tier and those whose time with the team was relatively brief. Scroll through their tweets and you'll see posts dedicated to players like Mark Ellis and John "Blue Moon" Odom, and Frank Thomas. You get the picture.

Today, in addition to Dave Parker, the A's also honored longtime MLB starter Aaron Harang, who debuted with the team in 2002 and was traded to the Reds, the franchise with which he enjoyed the most success, in 2003. He moved around a lot after that; Oakland is one of eight MLB teams that could've reasonably extended birthday greetings to the big righty.

"Happy birthday Aaron Harang!" the team wrote, with an emoji of a birthday cake at the end.

Since this news is coming from such a trusted source—again, this is the official A's Twitter account—one would be led to believe that today is Aaron Harang's birthday. However, other sources—namely Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, and MLB.com—claim otherwise. They say that Harang in fact turned 43 on May 9 of this year, not June 9. The Cincinnati Reds—who, really, would know more about this than the A's—even tweeted their own birthday wishes one month ago.

My in-depth research also brought me to this Philadelphia Phillies tweet from 05/09/2015, which implies that Harang's birthday is on that date.

Given the conflicting information currently available, it is impossible to conclude whether or not today is Aaron Harang's birthday. We will update this post as new information comes to light.