I like statistics as much as the next baseball fan. They were an important part of the stories I wrote whenever I covered the sport as a journalist.

Once upon a time, it was up to individual reporters to come up with special statistics. Then teams got involved … then stat services got involved. And now many sports journalists seem to be reciting the numbers sent up to them by the stat wonks … and we may be reaching a stats saturation point.

It seems as if every game ever played, at least since the 20th century dawned, is now part of gigantic data base that can spit out some really random statistics.

Some of those enhance our knowledge. Some of them take up space in game reports and fall into the category of “that is kinda interesting … but I’m starting to get stat bloat.”

By way of example, let’s examine the statistics dropped into the text of an ESPN.com report on Game 4 of the current World Series.

–“Javier Baez and Willson Contreras of the Chicago Cubs are 3-for-30 in the World Series with nine strikeouts.” (Is that so rare? Have the machine run the numbers on any two players from one team covering 30 at-bats and nine strikeouts … and I’m guessing it’s not at all uncommon.)

–Add Kris Bryant’s and Addison Russell, and the four young Cubs “are 6-for-59, a .102 batting average.” (So, four guys on one team, four games, hitting .102. That never happens.)

–To explain the Cubs’ struggles, ESPN Stats and Research told their man that the 51 percent of the Cubs’ swings came on pitches outside the strike zone — the second-highest ratio for any game played in 2016. “That includes every second-place to last-place team in baseball: 4,860 regular-season games — plus all the playoff contests.” The Arizona Diamondbacks, we are informed, beat the Cubs, spending 52 percent of their swings on non-strikes. (This is way obscure. And who is defining the strike zone when a batter swings and puts a ball in play?)

–The Cubs have struck out 17 times in 37 at-bats with runners on base. (OK, interesting, but we don’t know what they did in those other 20 at-bats. Maybe they hit four homers. They didn’t, but we’re just picking out the data we want, aren’t we?)

–Baez is struggling more than anyone. Again, citing ESPN Stats & Information, the author of the story notes Baez “has swung at 17 pitches outside the strike zone with a man on base without putting the ball in play in this series. In four games. Seventeen swings.” (Again, that sort of cold spell happens all the time, I’m thinking.)

And let’s look at one other ESPN.com story from Game 4.

–Indians pitcher Corey Kluber “lowered his postseason ERA to 0.89. Only Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson (0.38) has had a lower ERA over his first five postseason outings. (Can we compare anything from baseball today with what Christy Mathewson did a century ago? In the Dead Ball Era?)

–“The last time the Indians took a 3-1 lead in the World Series was 1948, the last year they won it all. Thirty-nine of the 44 teams to go up 3-1” went on to win the World Series. (Well, OK. One team needs one win from three games, the other has to win all three. Sure.)

–Jason Kipnis’s three-run home run in the seventh inning “was the first three-run World Series homer against the Cubs at Wrigley Field since Babe Ruth in 1932”. (No word on whether Kipnis had the same pre-game meal as the Bambino.)

–“Chicago entered the game 7-1 in the postseason and 73-20 during the regular season when scoring first.” And the Cubs took a 1-0 lead in the first. “Instead of building on those trends, the Cubs added another data point in the wrong column: They fell to 2-13 all time in World Series games at Wrigley Field.” (Even bad teams can have pretty impressive records when they score first. And that 2-13 Wrigley World Series games record includes two games from this weekend — and 11 from 1945 or earlier.)

–Cleveland’s Carlos Santana hit a home run in the second inning, “‘the first World Series homer at Wrigley Field since Detroit’s Hank Greenberg went deep in Game 6 of the 1945 Fall Classic”. (Exactly two homerless World Series games were played at Wrigley before Santana went deep. Followed by Kipnis and Dexter Fowler.)

–Cubs fans got nervous when the Indians took a 4-1 lead because a three-run edge is “something they have squandered just once in 71 games this season”. (Good teams will have great records any time they have a significant advantage. Most years, one good team will have some monstrous record “when taking a lead into the ninth inning.”)

–The Indians have won Games 3 and 4, with on more game on the road. And … “the last team to win Games 3, 4 and 5 of a World Series on the road was the 1996 Yankees.” The Indians “will also try to hand the Cubs a third straight loss for the first time since before the All-Star break”. (Interesting, but …)

–And just in case readers haven’t been overwhelmed by stats, the story ends with the reminder that a Cleveland victory in Game 5 would end the club’s 68-year championship drought while extending the Cubs’ failure to win a Fall Classic to 109 years. (We pretty much got this from the first 50 times we were told that.)

This is the thing. These stats can be illuminating, and then they can be too much, too often and lacking context.

They also can become a crutch for writers as well as broadcasters. (Russ Porter, formerly of the Dodgers, is remembered for the cascade of stats he dumped on listeners game after game.)

I would rather have more player reaction. I would rather have more expert analysis from these reporting veterans about the nuances of the game.

I would rather have a few less stats and more information on a player’s background — his history, his life. More anecdotes, fewer numbers.

But we seem headed the other way, with mountains of numbers at our command and an apparent insatiable urge to dispense them.