Picked up an All-Star ballot the other day and my first thought was that it was too soon to pick up an All-Star ballot.
The Major League season just started, didn’t it? A month into the action and they’re accepting ballots? It’s one thing to have hurry-up voting in presidential elections when there are two guys to choose between and there is a pretty good chance your mind wouldn’t change unless one of them went crazy in the streets ripping off his clothes down to his underwear.
But choosing All-Star starters, that’s serious business and it is something that must be deliberated on much longer. For one thing, MLB has the ballot printed up too soon and there are guys that get put on it who could be out for the season, guys who were expected to do well and have done bupkis this season, and guys who have come out of the gate hitting .400 when their projected average was .210.
I’m also not inclined to vote for players whose names mean nothing to me. The nominees are listed by first initial and last name. When you open the fold-out ballot the first thing you see is the American League. The first position listed is first base. And the first name listed is D. Barton, Oakland Athletics.
My first reaction was: Thanks for the clue supplying D. Barton’s team. So I looked up his stats. D. Barton is Daric Barton and he was hitting .184 going into Thursday’s games. He does not have my support. One of the candidates he is up against is Albert Pujols.
Not that anyone can justify a vote for the Angels’ Pujols right now, either. He is hitting .208 with 0 home runs.
The flip side of those downers at this moment, is that Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter, Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz, and Ranger outfielder Josh Hamilton are hitting the cover off the ball and if the election ended tomorrow MLB would throw a parade for them. Those guys are batting at or around .400. Throw in the Dodgers’ on-fire Matt Kemp and the Cardinals’ very sharp David Freese, too.
But the All-Star game is not until July 10 in Kansas City and by then Jeter, Ortiz, Hamilton, Kemp and Freese could be batting .220 and Pujols could be hitting .320. Those are all plausible scenarios.
Fans love the chance to participate in the process. This is Democracy in action. But this is also how we end up with the wrong guys starting or making the team in many years. If people are voting by the thousands months before the game, they aren’t voting based on up-to-date information.
Nothing would be more exciting than if all of those big guns were still hitting .400 in July. That would be thrilling, but it is almost surely not going to happen. The odds are better that one of them will make the All-Star team more because he had a fast start than because he is truly having an All-Star season.
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