Many sportswriters make the joke about copying and pasting what they wrote last year, but aside from Rick Reilly, not many have actually done it. It looks like we can add Kansas City Star political cartoonist and columnist Lee Judge to that list, though, and he appears to have done so in a particularly blatant way. Here’s Royals Review’s screencap of a May 27, 2015 Judge column defending RBIs side by side with one published Friday:

Deadspin’s Tom Ley has a further breakdown of the directly-copied text, and it’s a massive amount. As Max Rieper notes at Royals Review, Judge does start this column differently (bashing Moneyball instead of discussing the negative reaction to the Kendrys Morales signing), but from then on in, it’s so much the same that it wasn’t even worth a new rebuttal. About the only new information is a list of players’ 2015 home run totals.

The question is if the Star thinks it’s worth paying Judge twice for the same column (and enduring the scorn of the internet for doing so). At least this spared us more of his hot takes on Bryce Harper.

Running this kind of content is a disservice to readers, though; they’re expecting new columns, not the same thing they read last May with an updated list of home runs. The paper should want to be better than that, and they should make it clear to Judge that this isn’t acceptable.

[Royals Review]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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