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LA Times: Pirates "Expressed Interest" in Bobby Abreu

Well, this is interesting. 

The Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, New York Mets and Chicago White Sox reportedly expressed interest in Abreu, whom Greenberg believes is athletic enough to move over to left field, if needed.

This is almost surely moot now, since the Pirates signed Eric Hinske, and Abreu appears likely to go to the Angels. Abreu, a lefty and still a very good hitter, would be a great fit for the Pirates' outfield. Also, the Yankees didn't offer him arbitration, so he wouldn't cost the Pirates draft picks.

As a sidenote, I thought this was strange. From the LA Times article:

According to ESPN.com, Abreu, who has spent his entire big league career with the Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies and Yankees, joined Barry Bonds and Rickey Henderson last season as the only players to amass 200 homers and 300 stolen bases while maintaining a .400 on-base percentage.

Abreu is also one of five players with 100 RBIs and 100 runs scored in each of the last two seasons. The others are Alex Rodriguez, Chase Utley, David Wright and Adrian Gonzalez.

From Jerry Crasnick's article at ESPN.com:

This year Abreu joined Barry Bonds and Rickey Henderson as the only players to amass 200 homers and 300 stolen bases while maintaining a .400 on-base percentage.

Abreu is also one of five players with 100 RBIs and 100 runs scored in each of the past two seasons. The others: Chase Utley, Adrian Gonzalez, David Wright and Alex Rodriguez.

There's an "according to ESPN.com" in the LA Times article, but no quotation marks, and a couple of those sentences are virtually identical. The "joined Barry Bonds... a .400 on-base percentage" part could have been copy-pasted. That's 24 words. This isn't something that sportswriters at the LA Times usually do, is it? I've never edited a big paper and I don't have a journalism degree, so I'm not totally familiar with standard practice here, but I'm shocked to see that the LA Times has pretty much just copied Crasnick.