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You Cannot Make This Stuff Up

From David Waldstein [1] in the New York Times:

In 2002, three years after Valentine urged them to do so, the Mets brought in Satoru Komiyama, a control pitcher they called the Greg Maddux of Japan. Again, their timing was off. By the time the Mets got Komiyama, he was more like the Mike Maddux of Japan.

Based on a statistics sheet from Japan, Steve Phillips, the Mets’ general manager at the time, thought Komiyama was an experienced reliever. But Phillips misread the category Games Finished to mean saves, when it actually referred to complete games. Komiyama went 0-3 with a 5.61 earned run average (and no saves) for the Mets and went home after one year.

Good luck, Ryota Igarashi. All the same, we’d suggest you rent rather than buy.