Ladies and Germs,
I am here to present to you my observations on the trending amongst our so-called peers to indulge themselves in, what I call, The AE Fallacy. First and foremost, I cannot prove nor disprove the AE Fallacy is factually incorrect by statistics nor is that my intent here. This is a dialogue, a conversation if you will, a beginning of a idea that may turn out to be theoritical or just banter amongst friends. But it is important enough to speak about it now instead of later when The AE Fallacy takes full bloom amongst us all and we are overrun by those who become disciples of this new phenomenum.
What is The AE Fallacy?
It is important to lay the groundwork for this discussion correctly in order to understand one another and not stray too far into things like The Biggio Myth or The Berkman Complex. Those are discussions for another time, maybe even another place, but as our profound thinker and mentor Joaquin Andujar once said "juneberno". So The AE Fallacy is as follows:
With Adam Everett in the lineup, the Houston Astros have a weak hitting team. Remove him from the lineup and the Astros have a very good hitting team, will score more runs. Furthermore, what Adam Everett brings to the team in terms of defense is severely overrun (or offset) by his offensive misgivings. So the reverse effect is that you can afford less defense for more offense.
There are, of course, some variations of this particular fallacy, but by and large this is The AE Fallacy in it's context and one that will be tested for the next eight weeks or so.
What are the strengths and weaknesses in the thinking found in The AE Fallacy?
The strengths in this fallacy is of course more offense, however if I may be allowed to qualify the strength, that is contextual strength in nature. Again, I cannot prove or disprove this discussion point, I merely offer it as my own observation and leave it at that. The strength's context is more offense in terms of meta-baseball (or fantacrap as it's been called) and feeds into a perception of winning baseball. I don't necessarily subscribe to more offense equals winning games per se. So as long as we are clear that more offense is an output and it is the very strength of The AE Fallacy but we cannot or should not take this strength to mean that more games are won. In days past, more offense means more wins was the staple behind such prized teams as the mid 90s Texas Rangers who actually still practice a form of this methodology to date. So let's just leave the qualification intact and move on. We agree that without Adam Everett in the lineup, you will get more offense.
The weakness is of course less defense, especially in a highly regarded position as shortstop. But the most glaring weakness about The AE Fallacy is the statement that it doesn't matter what you get on defense because the offense will offset it. Well, if we take what we said in the strength part of our discussion, we can clearly see that more offense doesn't mean more wins. Does more defense mean more wins then? Not singularily, no. Which leads us to the real weakness of The AE Fallacy: offense and defense from a shortstop cannot be measured in singular terms because the position itself requires more of a team oriented, wins-based outcome. So, such wins be the measurement in the coming 8 weeks as to Adam Everett's contributions or lack thereof to winning baseball? Again, I think it will be hard to qualify because you have the symbotic relationship that a pitcher has with his defense and some may adjust their game enough to keep winning games regardless of who is at the shortstop position. It's tougher on the pitcher, but not impossible. It will be interesting to follow nonetheless and something that may either produce a re-think on the part of the Houston Astros team on the whole or maybe just prove once and for the all the real value of such a magnificient player as Adam Everett.
By the way, there is some precedent to this. In 2004, Adam Everett was hit by a stray pitch and had to sit out two months with a broken wrist. Erstwhile uber utility man Jose Vizcaino sat in for him and the team continued winning. However, I might add that the 2004 version of the Houston Astros had such players as Carlos Beltran, Lance Berkman, Jeff Kent and Jeff Bagwell in the lineup. Add in Mike Lamb at third having a spectacular second half and the correlation becomes one that lacks a little to this season's particular situation with Everett.
So what are the principles of the fallacy being whispered to date?
The whispers are now starting in the media and in the fandom that the broken leg for Adam Everett was a good thing because the full effect of The AE Fallacy can now bloom. It is of course a weak stance to take given nothing has been proven as of yet. The Adam Everett lineup of the past few months were chock full of Lance Berkman the Lesser struggling to even hit a baseball, much less be an offensive force and also the lack of a legit #5, the injury to the right fielder given an opportunity to play and the dethroning of the everyday centerfielder coupled with the emergence of a rookie hitter who strange as it may sound, is still trying to find himself in many ways. I'm sure that much will be made if the team scores more runs from now on. If the team also manages to win more games, again much will be made. And we will thus be overrun with the fallacy in full effect and quite possibly hard to ignore and really dissect properly. It will be similar in some ways to the "Chris Burke can hit 30 homeruns in the majors" tidal wave of early season 2005. It was hard to have honest discussions about it, but still we moved on. I suspect I for one will have to bite my tongue or turn off most if not all the sports talk shows for the next eight weeks because of The AE Fallacy in premature bloom.
I think I have a yard with landscape needs calling my name any way.
