I know you all really care about who I think should be in the all-star game. So here it is.
First off, this is more of an “all first-half team” for me, because I don’t care about the fan vote. I’m picking my own starters. But I will honor the one-player-per-team rule, so think of this of how I think the all-star game should look like, including the starters.
Step 1 – Get the crappy teams out of the way
This is always what I do first. Take the teams with the worst records in the league, give them their one guy, and be done with it.
Houston – Hunter Pence, OF (Wandy-Rod is a wild-card here if I have to choose between OF and P later)
Kansas City – Alex Gordon, OF (good for him, by the way)
Chicago (NL) – Starlin Castro, SS
Minnesota – Scott Baker, SP (man, they really have no one deserving)
Step 2 – Get the obvious guys in there
NL
Roy Halladay, SP, PHI
Cliff Lee, SP, PHI
Cole Hamels, SP, PHI
Jair Jurrjens, SP, ATL
Tommy Hanson, SP, ATL
Clayton Kershaw, SP, LAD
Brian McCann, C, ATL
Prince Fielder, 1B, MIL
Joey Votto, 1B, CIN
Jose Reyes, SS, NYM
Lance Berkman, OF, STL
Matt Kemp, OF, LAD
Ryan Braun, OF, MIL
AL
Justin Verlander, SP, DET
Jered Weaver, SP, LAA
James Shields, SP, TAM
Josh Beckett, SP, BOS
Mariano Rivera, RP, NYY
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B, BOS
Miguel Cabrera, 1B, DET
Paul Konerko, 1B, CHW
Jose Bautista, OF, TOR
Curtis Granderson, OF, NYY
Let’s see what the rosters look like now…
Step 3 – Go position-by-position for open starting positions
AL C – A pretty horrible year for this group… Alex Avila from DET is the obvious choice to start at this point. Back-up is going to be tricky, might have to see what teams need a player later on.
AL 2B – Cano, Zobrist and Kendrick all have a claim here. Cano leads in HR, RBI, SLG%, OPS though, and has a history behind him. Part of picking close calls for me is history of success, i.e. – they are likely to be good in the 2nd half of the season as well. Cano here.
AL 3B – A-Rod, Youk and Beltre here. With Mark Reynolds as a darkhorse. Beltre leads in HR and RBI, but has a .303 OBP, which disqualifies him for me. Youk and A-Rod are pretty much too-close-to-call, so I’ll take Youk’s .392 OBP as the deciding factor. Youk it is.
AL SS – Obviously Jeter. Just kidding, he sucks. It comes down to Asdrubal Cabrera and Jhonny Peralta here. Cabrera is the choice, because the surprising Indians should have a starter, and his glove-work this year has been sublime.
AL OF – One spot open here. Matt Joyce, Carlos Quentin are the best bets. Nelson Cruz and Jacoby Ellsbury also with consideration. I’ll give it to Joyce, giving him the edge over Quentin due to the Rays far better record.
NL 2B – Rickie Weeks is the starter here, with Danny Espinosa as the back-up. Brandon Phillips in the mix, but those two guys have really been the best NL 2B this year.
NL 3B – Wow, this group, uh, sucks. Let’s give it to Chipper, who is as deserving as any, as a farewell.
Step 4 – Teams that still need a player
At this point, this includes…
Baltimore – Mark Reynolds makes sense as a back-up 3B, and is probably the most deserving on the team despite his K’s.
Texas – Division leaders should probably have more than 1. We mentioned Nelson Cruz above as an OF option, so he’s in. And C.J. Wilson has had a great 2nd season as a starter.
Seattle – We know they aren’t getting any offense in there, but King Felix and super-rookie Michael Pineda are both deserving.
Oakland – Also no offense here. But have you seen Gio Gonzalez’ numbers? Yikes. He’s in.
Pittsburgh – Future Phillie Andrew McCutchen is a lock for the above .500 Pirates. Have to give Jeff Karstens a nod as well.
Florida – Anibal Sanchez makes the most sense here, and they aren’t getting more than 1 after that June.
San Francisco – Another division leader. Lincecum gets in, as does Brian Wilson.
Arizona – Several deserving candidates here. Both Justin Upton and Ian Kennedy were close to getting in during Step 2. Daniel Hudson probably ends up as the biggest snub here. Lincecum beats him out due to history.
Colorado – Tulo has to be in. Gives us 3 short-stops, but whatever. Jhoulys Chacin joins D. Hudson as deserving pitchers left out.
San Diego – Need relief pitchers, and Heath Bell is good.
Here is where this puts us… every team is accounted for at this point…
Step 5 – Fill-out remaining bench spots
NL RP – Truthfully, Antonio Bastardo deserves a look here, but Jonny Venters absolutely needs to be on this team. That’s 5 Braves – no more.
NL C - Miguel Montero is the obvious choice here, giving the D-Backs a surprising 3 AS’s.
NL 1B – Ryan Howard has 64 RBI’s on a pretty crappy offensive team. He’s in. Pujols would be in, but he’s hurt obviously. Sorry Gaby Sanchez, no more Marlins. Not sure I’ll carry another 1B with Votto DH-ing. We will see. Maybe another pitcher with so many deserving.
NL 3B – Do I really have to pick someone else here? Can’t we just play Tulo at 3B? You know what, I’m playing Tulo at 3B.
NL OF/Util – Matt Holliday and Carlos Beltran make the most sense here. I’m also giving a deserving Victorino a nod.
Final Spot – This leaves one spot open for the NL, and Jordan Zimmerman deserves it and the Nats should have more than 1 guy there.
3 AL pitchers – Need at least 2 more relievers and Chris Perez and Jose Valverde as good a choice as any, and get some more representation for the top of the AL Central. Ricky Romero beats out Jon Lester for the final spot, though I think Lester might sneak in anyway, Jordan Zimmerman style.
AL C – Carlos Santana beats out a bunch of mediocre competition here.
AL 1B – Mark Teixeira leads the league in homers with 25. Should be there.
AL 2B – Zobrist or Kendrick? It’s really a coin flip. I’ll put in Zobrist cause he hasn’t missed any time.
AL SS – Peralta.
4 OF/UTIL spots – A-Rod and Ellsbury are both deserving. We’ll throw Kendrick in there and then give Lester the last spot.
OK – so that’s it. Pretty easy, right?
Here are my official 34-man rosters for the 2011 All-Star game…
So tell me, how did I screw this up? Who did I miss? Who shouldn’t be on there? Who are the biggest snubs?
Have at it in the comments, and feel free to use this as your PHI/TOR game thread.
Happy 4th of July!
Minor typo: All of the below are in AL, unless i’ve missed a drastic realignment:
Justin Verlander, SP, DET
Jered Weaver, SP, LAA
James Shields, SP, TAM
Josh Beckett, SP, BOS
Mariano Rivera, RP, NYY
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B, BOS
Miguel Cabrera, 1B, DET
Paul Konerko, 1B, CHW
Jose Bautista, OF, TOR
Curtis Granderson, OF, NYY
no Polanco?
He’ll make the real show cause it seems he’ll get voted in. But his numbers are pretty poor right now…
boy he really has taken a nose-dive. Very dissappointing actually. Never thought he was a streaky hitter but it appears that is what he has turned into.
Should I be surprised that Lance Berkman has played more games (72) than Victorino (65) as an outfielder and is having a better season? Because I am.
Glad to be settling in for the first game I’ve been able to watch in quite some time.
Good God, this conversation between Sarge and T-Mac is excruciating.
“Glad to be settling in for the first game I’ve been able to watch in quite some time.”
followed by…
” Good God, this conversation between Sarge and T-Mac is excruciating.”
I found that very funny.
Phils are 12-22 when the opposition scores 4 or more runs. So now that the Jays have 4, phils have their work cut out for them.
“giving the D-Backs a surprising 3 AS’s”
Why is this surprising?
Typical East Coast bias…
I just read the final selections, not the entire process, but if this were a predictor of who gets on the team, it’s one thing, considering Bruce’s home town “right,” if you will to pick Timmy and Wilson, but I have to think seriously about Garcia for the cards, who took one for the team one night, and season stats reflect it, and Daniel Hudson. Hudson has recovered from a pathetic start.
I’d take Gaby Sanchez as well. I guess Howard’s debatable, and I don’t know how consistent I’d be about first half over career achievemnt, but with hanley and Josh doing very little (injury and of late for the early stellar Josh), and LoMo and Stanton out, gaby has kept that team afloat. Well, affloated I guess. But I think he deserves to go. Agree on danny espinosa despite the low batting average.
This shouldn’t be taken as adamant Lincecum and Wilson flat out shouldn’t go. I’d probably take Hanrahan over Wilson though, if I wanted another closer.
no Greg Dobbs?
Heard an interesting “this day in baseball” on the radio today – Toronto feed. Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn locked up in a pitching duel. It was scoreless in the top of the 16th (yes top of 16th) when Will Mays hit Spahn’s 265th pitch (yes I said 265th) for a homerun to secure a 1-0 win. Spahn made his next start on normal rest. Not sure how many pitches Juan threw but probably similar. My how times have changed.
Things that have happened twice: Halladay throwing over 250 innings in a season. Spahn throwing over 300 in a season. 21 seasons, he averaged 250 innings a year.
Also, he probably made somewhere in the ballpark of $1.5 million in salary over the course of those 21 seasons.
sorry to bust the bubble of baseball lore, at least common sense wise, but while this game is indeed one of the most notable in baseball history, the chances of anyone throwing 265 pitches in this game is ridiculously slim.
Spahn, for his part, only struck out 2 batters. He only walked one hitter. he gave up 9 hits. Now it’s possible he ran 3-2 counts all over town to drive the pitch count up, but that’s not particularly realistic.
I’d guess that at best, it took him 140 pitches to get through 9 innings. Probably more like 125, if that. I mean he only struck out 2 hitters all night. Maybe another 80 to get through the next 6 plus innings.
As further research reveals, Marichal, who struck out 10, walked 4, and gave up 8 hits, threw 227 pitches. That’s feasible, considering he struck out 10, and threw the entire 16 innings. That sounds a lot more accurate.
But kudos to Spahn for what he did that night, however many more than 2 hundred pitches he threw. He was 42 at the time, and the loss dropped his record to 11-4. Marichal, age 25, upped his record to 13-3 with the Mays inspired win.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/epic-pitchers-duels-part-3/
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pretty spot on analysis Pete. I would agree on virtually all of your selections except for Espinoza:
1.I’d pick Phillips over Espinoza based on a much better BA, longevity of his career, similar SLG and OPS despite Espinosa’s HR edge, and much less K’s. Defensively, I also like Phillips, but Chase is better than both of them.
No question that Howard should be there…unlike last year I’d put him ahead of Votto who seems to have “lost” his power and has been very inconsistent.
Future Phillie McCutchen? Did I miss something, or is that just wishful thinking?
Absolutely nothing to it. I just hope if I say it enough it will happen.
Yes, I can see McCutch in Phillies red. Seems like the perfect fit, too. Or the Phils coming out of left field (literally) and trading for Jose Bautista at the deadline.
One thing Amaro has proven so far is that he’s always swinging for the fences, even when he says he isn’t. I have no idea who will be involved, but i’f give it a 60-70% chance that we see something crazy happen before all is said & done.