On July 10th, Major League Baseball will hold it's annual "midsummer classic," or as it is more commonly known, it's All-Star Game. The only problem with this game is that it...well...pretty much everything is wrong with it.
The first and most obvious reason that the All-Star Game is a joke is that fans vote for the starting lineups. The game is supposed to be for the fans, and that is why we get to vote for the starters. The only problem with this is that fans have no clue whatsoever when it comes to who the starters should actually be. Each year, fans of a few teams stuff the ballot boxes with votes for their own players, and guys on these teams that are not deserving of even making the team end up in the starting lineups. Usually, this happens with teams like the Yankees or the Phillies, but this year that team in the Texas Rangers.
The Rangers have a member of their team at each position in the top four in voting, with four of them in the lead as the voting winds down. Now there is no question that a guy like Josh Hamilton should be starting. He is having, in my opinion, the best season of any offensive player in all of baseball, but some of the other selections are laughable. Miguel Cabrera is clearly having a better year at third base than Adrian Beltre, but Beltre leads the voting at that position. Jason Kipnis has a better batting average, more home runs, more stolen bases, and more RBI than Ian Kinsler, yet Kinsler leads the voting at second base and Kipnis has no chance to catch him. A.J. Pierzynski is not only better all around this year offensively than Mike Napoli, but he is also better defensively than Napoli, yet Napoli is the leading vote-getter at catcher. Edwin Encarnacion is having a far better year than Michael Young at DH, but has no chance to catch Young in the voting.
I understand that the Rangers have great fans this year and that is why their players are getting so many votes, and that is great for the team and the fans. The team has been great over the last few years, so more power to the fans for exercising their power to vote.
The problem with all of this skewed voting however, is the fact that Major League Baseball decided to make the winner of the All-Star Game have it's league gain homefield advantage in the World Series. Team records or seeds have no say whatsoever when the World Series comes, the deciding factor in homefield advantage is the winner of one game three months before we even knew who would play in the playoffs, let alone the World Series. This happened, once again, because fans are absolutely clueless. After an extra innings All-Star Game ended in a tie some years ago, fans killed the league and clamored for some way to make the game matter again. Therefore, Major League Baseball announced that homefield advantage in the World Series would be decided by the winner of the All-Star Game. Clueless.
However, it doesn't stop there. Making matters worse, a rule exists that says each team must have at least one representative in the game. That means teams like the Cubs and the Twins who have zero players deserving of an All-Star selection, will have one nonetheless. Once again, if the game had no meaning and truly were just an exhibition, this would be fine. Each team would get some kind of recognition in the game. But, since the game now decides homefield advantage in the World Series, why does this rule still exist? As if it isn't bad enough already that some guys are starting that don't even deserve to be in the game, now we have guys on the bench that don't even deserve to be in the game either. What if the winning run of the game is driven in by someone on the Padres as he bats against someone on the Royals? That will decide homefield advantage in the World Series. It's as if the league wants it both ways. They want to satisfy the clueless fans by adding meaning to the game, yet they also want to satisfy the teams by allowing players from all 30 teams to play in the game.
If the game is an exhibition, then let the fans vote in the starters, because that is who the fans want to see. If the game has such a huge meaning that it decides homefield advantage in the World Series, then the players that are having the best years should be playing. Major League Baseball is trying to have it both ways, and in doing so, I think they are looking almost as clueless as the fans voting in all these players that don't deserve to be there.
Daily Giants Update: Minicamp is underway and Justin Tuck has a new facemask that looks ridiculously close to what Anthony Hopkins wore in "Silence of the Lambs." When that is the biggest news, that means no one is getting hurt, and there is no controversy, and that is a good thing. Less than two months already until the first preseason game and defense of the title officially begins.
Daily Diamondbacks Update: Wade Miley was brilliant again last night and Aaron Hill hit for the cycle in a victory over the Mariners. The game is just underway tonight, and a win would put us back at .500. Things have been getting better lately, and there is still plenty of time left to go in the season. Three of the next four series' are against teams with records below .500, and then the first place Dodgers come to the desert for the final four games prior to the All-Star break. A strong final three weeks of the first half of the season and things could be looking much better come mid-July.
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