I have only two things to say about the all-star game, none of which get into the tedious business of player “snubs”.
1. It’s possible to get carried away with the idea that the squads should be chosen based entirely on first-half-of-2009 performance. I said this on “The Low Post,” Tuesday, but when I was in college, in Western Pa., one spring Rennie Stennett was hitting like .335, having the best start of his career, so my idiot Pirate-fan friends were convinced the entire voting process was a fraud because Joe Morgan, having a typical Joe Morgan year as I remember, was ahead of Stennett in the voting at 2B.
Now, Stennett and Morgan were both veteran players at this point, and everyone knew that one of them was a pretty good player and one of them was a hall of famer. Which is to say, one of them was an all-star and one of them wasn’t. And the voters are supposed to throw all that away, pretend it doesn’t exist, because Rennie Stennett had a hot 150 at-bats?
Now if Morgan had really had a bad first half, we’d have an argument. If Stennett was the MVP of the league to that point, we’d have an argument. If Stennett was a Bo Jackson-like attraction everyone nationally wanted to see, we’d have an argument. But, “Look at my man Rennie’s batting average!…” No. That’s not an argument.
2. I have no problem with fan voting. In fact, they do at least as well and often better than the players or managers, and this year is no exception. The only problem with fan voting, and it’s not that big or intractable a problem, is municipal ballot-stuffing, i.e. certain players do well because of where they play, not how.
There’s a solution to this, proposed by Bill James years ago- make each major-league city a voting precinct. Every vote gets counted in the precinct of the closest major-league city. Give, say, 10 points for finishing first in a precinct, 9 points for second, and so on. The all-star starter is the point leader at each position. Doesn’t matter if three times as many people voted in New York as in Pittsburgh. Winning the Pittsburgh precinct would have the same value and winning the New York one.
See what would happen? The idiot vote - or, put more kindly, the for-the-wrong-reasons vote - would be cancelled out, and the knowledgeable, or at least earnest, voters would get to in effect pick the teams.
*Postscript: I’m watching the Phils as I wrote this, and Tom McCarthy and Wheels are talking about some promotion the club’s in which they’ve somehow found or chosen three guys to pretty much come live at the ballpark and just constantly vote online for Shane Victorino, over and over, for the final all-star spot. Like that’s a good thing.
In other news:
There’s a theory out there that lefty, pull-hitting power guys like Ryan Howard and the Artist formerly known as Big Papi aren’t necessarily RBI machines because they’re clutch, but because a defensive shift isn’t as viable or common or effective with men on base. Interestingly, these guys tend to have essentially the same home-run and strikeout rates in “clutch” situations as in non-clutch ones. The difference is damage done by balls put in play. Only a theory. See what you think.
