All-Star rituals

In advance of Major League Baseball announcing the rosters for the MLB All-Star Game, to be played two Tuesdays from now, I engaged in one of my longtime traditions—selecting the rosters myself then seeing where the fans, players, and Commissioner's office differed/made mistakes.

It's a meaningless exercise, but I still somehow enjoy doing it. Not as much as I used to; 20, 30, even 40 years ago(!) it seemed to have more heft, maybe because the All-Star Game itself was fun then. These days it's kind of a joke, almost never an interesting game and treated as a circus sideshow that no one, not even the players involved, cares who wins. The most interesting part is really who makes the team and who doesn't, which is a sad indictment of what Manfred (and Selig before him) has done to turn the Midsummer Classic into a sort of clown show.

I admit that this year I haven't paid as much attention to the Majors generally beyond the hometown Mariners. I mean, still some, of course, but I had to dig into the stats and research to even have an idea about who to pick for a few positions. Which is a roundabout way of saying that, yes, my bias may be showing more than is typical with this year's rosters.

Anyway, here's what I came up with vs. what reality gave us. The selection process for the reality side is a lot more cumbersome than it was in the before-time, when starters were elected by the fans and everyone else was chosen by the manager. Now the manager has no say and player votes—which happen way too early in the season and are thus always problematic—determine most of the squads and the Commissioner's office fills out the rest. Rules are that every team must have a representative and there be 12 pitchers and 20 position players on each roster. I followed these even though I disagree with the rigid 12/20 split. The Commissioner is also allowed to add an extra player as a "legacy choice," for a beloved veteran star player at the end of his career who might not be having a great season; I did not follow that, because there isn't someone who fits the bill this year. Manfred's office did use it as a way to put an extra player in anyway, but I consider that an abuse of the rules.

¹ indicates election by the fans on the right side, chosen to start by me on the left; ² indicates elected by the players (back in late May, so without half the season so far to work from); * indicates the player is injured or won't participate and will need to be replaced. Batting stats are the standard slash line of AVG/OBP/SLG, pitching stats are W-L, ERA, and WHIP.

The NL's extra player comes via the Commissioner tagging Harper as a "legacy" selection, used here as a loophole to fix problems caused by the player and fan votes. Not having those constraints, I didn't need the loophole and could include Harper on merit.

A lot of the other discrepancies can, I think, be blamed on flaws with the player vote system. It should change. Firstly, the players vote way too early, around the end of May, so though some of their picks might look good on May 30th, by the break they seem...weird. Like Bazzana, he was tearing it up early in the season, but he hit .189 in June once the league got a scouting report on him. Chapman was otherworldly through May 30, then posted an ERA of almost 6.50 afterward. Joe Ryan? Meh, but on May 30 it made more sense. And since Chapman and Smith got in on player votes, the relievers that should go got picked by the Commissioner's office and two deserving starters get hosed.

Then there's the problem of when the player vote matches the fan vote, which surely happens in at least half the cases; then whoever is runner-up gets the nod even if the gap between first and second is a vast chasm. I can't fathom why the players voted in Vargas or Stewart—who isn't even his team's regular third baseman—so I have to figure a significant majority of players voted for Caminero and Muncy and the rest of the votes were diluted through the rest of the league.

The fan vote is always going to throw some odd twists into things, giving us, say, a starting catcher that spent a month on the injured list and then batted .079 since coming back, but the player vote we can try to fix. First, do it later—like, a month later. Give the hot starts time to cool off and the lousy ones time to stabilize. Second, if the players vote matches the fan vote, no prize for second place. Leave the spots open to be filled by the league, without restricting by position. Or, maybe just set a threshold—the runner-up has to crack 30% of the vote to get in, if not, spot left open.

Some other bits:

• I chose Pete Alonso to represent the Orioles, while Manfred's office chose Adley Rutschman even though Rutschman has spent most of the year on the injured list. It seems they want to have three catchers even though they don't need to—ASG rules allow a catcher who has been removed from the game to return if the current catcher gets hurt. If there were three All-Star worthy catchers, great, but there aren't.
• With Guerrero opting out, it's likely Contreras will get in as his replacement, so that difference will probably disappear.
• My choice of Young is partly hometown bias and partly because there just aren't many good 2Bs in the American League right now. Once you're past Clement, it's a big drop, and one could even make a case for Young over Clement if you prioritized RBIs over hits. 
• Hopefully Antonacci will get named as Judge's replacement so the White Sox don't end up with their only rep being someone not close to being their best player.
• I don't get some of the Commissioner selections. Wacha has decent numbers, sure, but not great; Martinez's are far better. And no shade to Ranger Suarez, he can be great sometimes, but several others have been better overall this year. And Logan Webb, that one's inexplicable. You didn't need a Giant, so...?
• I feel bad for Jung-Ho Lee. Webb is an All-Star with his mediocre season, but not fellow Giant Lee, who's having a great year for a bad team? To a lesser extent, same goes for Johnston, but at least a cogent argument can be made for his Rockies teammate Hunter Goodman, who has 27 homers even if his on-base stinks.
• The league hasn't named a starting pitcher yet, but I'm conceding that Shitty Hitler deserves it despite being a Yankee. If not for missing time on the IL, I'd have gone with Miller.

Whew. What a giant waste of time that was.