Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Misleading stats

The Angels just traded Steve Finley to the Giants for Edgardo Alfonso. (This is a good move for the Angels.) In their story on this trade, ESPN writes that Finley "is the only active player with 300 doubles, 100 triples and 200 homers." Yeah, that's because he's the only active player with 100 triples (Kenny Lofton is next with 98), so you can add anything else there and get a true statement. Finley is also the only active player with 100 or more career triples and at least 1 career walk. Come on. I've seen people do this before when Finley has been traded or signed as a free agent and it cheapens things. Finley has had a very fine career, and there's no reason to pad things. Rephrasing the above to indicate that Finley has achieved the above would have been much better, but the only "only" should be placed with the triples, which has really become a lost art (with only a few players getting a decent number of triples year after year) in the modern game with the ever-smaller ballparks.

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