Column Published

It’s another baseball column, this time I try to defend Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds. It’s similiar to an earlier column in style. I enjoy writing dialogues like this and I’m lucky the Bleacher Report tolerates me as much as they do.

Random Link o’ the Day:

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

Crisis?

Gas Prices as a Percent of Income:

It looks like the increased cost of gasoline has had very little impact on the pocketbooks of Americans.

Logical Fallacies

Aaron Gleeman had this to say about Joe Mauer:

Mauer suffered a major knee injury during his rookie season, but in three seasons since then he’s been hurt exactly one time and went two entire seasons without suffering a significant injury of any kind. To me, one injury in nearly three years is not something that suggests moving the best catcher in baseball to another position is necessary. Beyond that, whether from Torii Hunter or Patrick Reusse, the recent talk of Mauer lacking toughness is absurd.

Mark Teixeira is a first baseman who set a Rangers team record by playing in 507 straight games. On Saturday he went on the disabled list with the exact same injury that sidelined Mauer recently, a strained quadriceps muscle. Teixeira landing on the DL obviously had nothing to do with catching and I’ve yet to see anyone suggest that it’s due to lacking toughness. Teixeira landed on the DL because injuries happen. Unless they happen to Mauer more than once every three years, he’s just fine.

Some problems, first, Joe Mauer has been hurt twice in four seasons for an injury rate of once every two years.

Second, by comparing Joe Mauer to Mark Texiera he makes a huge misstep in logic. If I say, “because Person A got shot while working at a Gas Station and Person B got shot in Iraq it is thus no more dangerous to work as a soldier in Iraq than it is to work at a gas station,” clearly I have made a bad argument. It’s not that ball players get injured, it is at what rate players at different positions get hurt. Catchers get hurt more often and in more ways than other players. Everything from collision plays at home to circulatory problems in their hands.

I would rather reduce the liklihood of injury to one of the best hitters on the Twins by getting him out from behind the plate than to hope that there’s something special or supernatural about Mauer and hope Providence protects him from injury.