There are all kinds of interesting angles to take on the All-Star rosters that were announced yesterday, and we'll certainly be getting to those over the coming days. One of the ones I don't think anyone here at CTB would be inclined to take, however, is how the failure of Manny Ramirez or Alex Rodriguez to make the All-Star team represented an anti-PED statement by the voters. That doesn't stop MLB.com's Mike Bauman, however:
A record 223.5 million votes were cast for the 2009 All-Star Game selections. Without pandering to the audience, this process had both quantity and quality. And it was notable not only for which players the fans elected, but which players the fans did NOT elect . . . In the latter category, the most prominent names would be Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez. Both were linked this year to performance-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez was forced to admit his usage of PEDs . . . The voters are to be congratulated for not turning a blind eye to these offenses . . . By omitting this pair, the fans and the players have essentially taken a stand against the use of PEDs.
That's one way to think about it. The other way to think about it is to say that the voters have not turned a blind eye to the fact that Evan Longoria is a heck of a lot more deserving than a guy who has hit .244 in limited play and that Ryan Braun, Raul Ibanez, and Carlos Beltran (and Matt Kemp and a bunch of other guys) are all more deserving than a guy who has played in only 35% of his team's games this season.
Sure, the fans rejecting the cheaters en masse makes for a nice story and everything, but it's not like keeping Manny and A-Rod out of the All-Star game requires some political statement. Neither is deserving on the merits and neither made it. Given that, with the large exception of Josh Hamilton, the fans did a pretty good job with the votes, I'd offer that their exclusion was a baseball judgment, not a political one.
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Yeah, the Dodger fans are making a huge statement by shunning Manny. Oh wait, that's not what happened?
I'd put up Yadier Molina over McCann as another obvious mistake by the fans - of course, Molina got voted in because players on the hosting team always get a bump in the vote total.
If you think McCann is an "obvious mistake" then you clearly believe that being and All Star is strictly an offensive selection. Take a quick look at the assists and caught stealing stats. Molina throws out nearly 50% of all attempts and his assists numbers are insane. (All those pick offs at first base.) If defense doesn't count maybe we should just start Prince Fielder at catcher!
First of all, defense for catchers is incredibly difficult to measure - beyond things like CS numbers and range on popups and bunts, which are relatively easy to measure (and by the way, a pickoff counts as a CS, not as an assist), there's blocking balls in the dirt and calling a game, which tend to be more difficult to measure, not to mention to incorporate with the other statistics. Is Molina better defensively than McCann? I don't doubt it, but it's unclear exactly how much better. What is clear is that they are miles apart offensively - McCann has a 135 OPS+ for the season and 123 for his career; Molina has a 95 OPS+ for the season and 78 for his career. According to fangraphs.com, over 10 fewer games, McCann has still been worth 2.4 wins above replacement, to Molina's 1.6.
I don't think being an All Star is strictly offensive, but I do think that McCann's offensive advantage easily outweighs Molina's defensive advantage. And your reductio ad absurdum with the Fielder example is just that - absurd.
Carlos Beltran says 'hi'
A-Rod certainly missed too much time to be compared with Longoria for a spot on the All-Star team, but pointing to his .244 AVG is missing the forest for the trees.
A-Rod: (.935OPS, 144 OPS+)
E-Long: (.914OPS, 134 OPS+)
If anything, A-Rod has been MORE productive in limited playing time. Those walks sure add a ton of value. They also have nearly identical rates of production for traditional stats like runs and RBI.
I suspect that Craig is aware that A-Rod is still fairly productive. The fans who vote in the All-Star game love AVG, however.
Of course, this raises the question of just how long this excuse will still be valid. The explosion in statistics is ongoing, but I wonder how long it will be before we can say that your average fan has given up on RsBI, AVG, and the other Chadwickian stats for good. I suppose it's farther away than I'd like but sooner than I'd actually expect.
"E-Long?"
*sigh*
When I was a kid I wanted Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, and Boog Powell in the game every year; I neither knew nor cared about what kind of season they were having. After watching decades of All-Star games, it seems to me the rejection of Ramirez and Rodriguez is primarily due to their behavior and the probably-accurate perception that they're a couple of multi-million-dollar, major-league jerks. That ticks people off, plain and simple.
Whatever reasons fans had to keep these two out of the All Stars, it should be noted that the top A.L. vote getter was none other than NYY shortstop, Derek Jeter. It is refreshing to see baseball fans recognize that Jeter is a role model and all star both on and off the field.
Too bad he's such a defensive liability, can't hit in the clutch, and has no idea what responsibilities come with the C on his uniform. Other than that he's a decent ballplayer.
I'm neither a Yankees fan nor a Jeter fan, but if you actually check his defensive stats for the last year and a half, he is right at league average (the three previous years he was dreadful, but there are indications that he has improved). And we should all know that statistically there is no such thing as clutch hitting, or the opposite. As for the captain thing, well, that seems entirely subjective.
I feel like Jeter became so over-rated that everyone picked him apart. And now he's under-rated by most fans and stillover-rated by Yankee truthers. He's having a solid season and this selection doesn't bother me.
And I'm not a fanof him at all. I was very happy to hear the crowd at Turner Field boo him more than they did Rodriguez.
Manny can be as big a jerk as he wants (and will be), and the LA fans will love him. Remember, you are talking about Kalifornia.
Tep. After all they did elect Arnold for Guv.
Now if only Fox would do the same and clueless Selig issue something, anything about the Saturday fiasco.
Fans always vote for star power in the All Star game. If A-Rod isn't on the squad it's because the fandom of baseball is finally ready to admit and embrace its collective hatred of his smarmy, cheating persona.
The fans have a long, long history of voting for the name, not the numbers. As one small example among many, that's how Jeter has gotten in year after year, when several other shortstops each year have had better numbers in the first half and justifiably deserved to go. The game is, after all, supposed to be feature the best players THIS YEAR. It's not a lifetime achievement award. Do you honestly believe that this year, for the first time ever, the fans collectively studied the numbers and actually voted for the most deserving players?? That's laughable. The omissions of Manny and A-ROID look pretty clearly like a fan base that's tired of supporting perpetual liars and cheaters.
That's why Selig has to change the voting rules to the fans voting every other year and the players voting in between. That way you get a fan show one year and a real players show the next. Also, starting this Allstar game, Selig ought to announce that from this game forward, no more steroids. If your caught your banned, period. This will give most of the guys that are still juicing a little time to ween themselves off the stuff and just start taking protein.
Jeff Francouer thinks OBP A, isn't shown on the Turner Field scoreboard, and B, isn't that important. He's wrong on both accounts.
Joe Morgan said that the game has changed where teams are no longer waiting on the 3 run HR anymore even though no one has done that in the last twenty+ years.
Dusty Baker thinks big guys who walk a lot "clog up the bases".
Thinking that removing the elections from the fans will make the ASG better is extremely naive.
MJ, you may be right but I think that the fans would be interested in seeing the players choices compared to theirs once in a while. Maybe Selig could give it a try for just one on and off cycle and see how it goes?If it doesn't work, then it's all back to the fans....Maybe even having 2 games per year. The fans game on one night and then the players game the next night or sometime later in the year. What do you think?
We talk about these offenses but, Saturday on Fox they kept showing Rameriez every time he was at bat.....What was that about?
Jeter should not be on the team, other than for a lifetime achievement award. Given that people tend to vote for the most famous name, I am surprised A-Fraud was left off the team.
The writer conveniently forgot to mention that A-Rod missed the first month of the season with hip surgery, and had to rehab it in the second month of the season. Also, A-Rod didn't break any of baseballs rules like Manny did.
Is that supposed to make him any more worthy of going to the All-Star game? All of those things happened, but they're kind of beside the point.
Nice to see that 'imwhitewolf' is a Derek Jeter hater. Always pays to have someone out there, crying in the wilderness and displaying his total lack of knowledge. Derek Jeter is the FACE OF BASEBALL and there is no getting around that.
False. Derek Jeter is the face of Yankee baseball. I guarantee more people know who Alex Rodriguez is.
And in the meantime, Ryan Franklin gets named to the team. There are advantages to relative mediocrity, eh?
Mr. Calcaterra is dreaming. The day fans start voting based on defensible merit is the day I will eat an All-Star ballot. The average fan has an understanding of what causes wins and losses which runs about as deep as the typical BBWAA scribe's (for those scoring at home, that's pretty darned shallow). I'm sure this really was an anti-PED statement. It's something simple and straightforward that the average joe can get his knee-jerk mind around, and gives him a glorious chance to pontificate to the guy in the next seat. Much easier than taking an hour to understand VORP, WARP or the high correlation between team OPS and runs scored.
Manny and A=Rod should FART IN Craigs mouth, that would be funny