Steve Phillips And His Trouble Understanding Japanese Box Scores

The New York Mets under Steve Phillips, summed up in six sentences.

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.

Remember, Steve Phillips is a man who is now paid for his supposed baseball expertise.

The entire article in the New York Times is worth the read, as they take you down memory lane, detailing the Mets' "spirited, but often unproductive, pursuit of Japanese players."