TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Friday, July 02, 2004

Filling out the All-Star Team

Be prepared for the annual round of teeth-grinding in the next week about who gets left off the all-star team, why we need bigger or smaller rosters, the wisdom of allowing fans to vote or the managers to pick their own team favorites, and the one-player-per-team rule.

Joe Torre has a history of cronyism in selecting a number of his own players for the bench, but he's not really different from most managers other than he has an unusually large number of opportunities to manage his league. Jack McKeon had to wait long enough to get here, so he can go nuts, too, as far as I'm concerned. But I reserve the right to select my own teams when they make me commissioner.

It's actually a fairly simple mechanistic formula if you want to select on this year's performance:

1. Select the best player on each major league team to get the hard part out of the way first.
   
2. Add in players selected by the fans.
   
3. Add in any players among the top ten hitters and pitchers not represented by (1) and (2).
   
4. For any position without a backup, select the best available player at that position.
   
5. Fill in your roster with cronies or deserving candidates. For my team, I decided to choose the latter.
   

Every year the "snubs" tend to be at OF and 1B, largely because of the outsized offensive production focussed in those areas and the requirement there be backups at all the positions. Nothing -- nothing -- can be done to prevent snubs short of adding another 200 players to the roster.

So, let's go through my formula.

1. Take the best player from each team. (Asterisk indicates a player who wouldn't "normally" "deserve" to be on the All-Star team, but makes it because you have to have one. Anybody not in the top five at his position in the league, or top 15 pitchers, we would so designate.
   
   American League
   Yankees - tie between A-Rod and Javier Vazquez, A-Rod gets the coin flip.
   Red Sox - Manny Ramirez beats Curt Schilling
   Tampa Bay - Carl Crawford based on secondary average
   Toronto - Vernon Wells
   Baltimore - Melvin Mora
   White Sox - Frank Thomas
   Twins - Joe Nathan
   Cleveland - CC Sabathia
   Tigers - Pudge Rodriguez
   Royals - Ken Harvey* [Note Beltran can't represent the Royals!]
   Texas - Kenny Rogers (with all due respect to Hank Blalock)
   Seattle - Ichiro
   Oakland - Mark Mulder
   Anaheim - Vlad
   
   National League
   Philly - Jim Thome
   Florida - close tie between Pavano and Penny, we'll go with Pavano
   Mets - Tom Glavine
   Atlanta - JD Drew
   Montreal - Livan Hernandez*
   Cardinals - Scott Rolen
   Cubs - Aramis Ramirez
   Milwaukee - Ben Sheets (beating Overbay)
   Reds - Sean Casey
   Houston - Roger Clemens
   Pittsburgh - Jack Wilson
   Giants - Jason Schmidt (yes, better than Barry, relatively, I think, but Barry gets on anyway later)
   Arizona - Randy Johnson
   Colorado - Todd Helton
   LA - Eric Gagne
   San Diego - a tough one, since it's been a team effort this year, but we'll go with Trevor Hoffman
   
   
2. Add in players voted in by the fans.
   In the AL, that's Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, Derek Jeter, and probably Hideki Matsui. In the NL, add Mike Piazza, Albert Pujols, Jeff Kent, Edgar Renteria (probably), Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey, Sammy Sosa.
   
   
3. Add in top-ten players who are all-stars on their own hook, fleshing out the pitching staffs in the process since the fans don't vote on pitchers.
   
   My AL list: Curt Schilling, Javier Vazquez, Tim Hudson, Jake Westbrook, Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Francisco Cordero, Eddie Guardado.
   
   My NL list: Johnny Estrada, Brad Penny, Carlos Zambrano, Odalis Perez, Matt Clement.
   
   
4. Add the best available at each position for which you need a back-up.
   
   AL: Juan Uribe at 2B, Carlos Guillen at SS, Jorge Posada at C.
   NL: Todd Walker at 2B (leading the majors in HR by a second baseman).
   

Here's the list of all-star snubs:

Notable will be Beltran, who, having been traded prior to the all-star game, won't have stats to justify an NL selection, and can't be his former team's representative. Hence Ken Harvey gets on the team.

In the NL, your snubs: Bob Abreu, Lance Berkman, Adam Dunn, Mike Lowell, Lyle Overbay.

In the AL: David Ortiz, Hank Blalock, Travis Hafner, Paul Konerko, Gary Sheffield.

Of course, it seems unlikely Mike Lowell will be left off the NL squad, and I suspect Torre will pick Sheffield and a few other Yankees to bump off a few random others above. And I'd be shocked if Torre selected Pedro Martinez, who, if not the Pedro of old, is still certainly among the top ten pitchers in performance.

So here are your squads:

Position	NL	AL
C	Piazza, Estrada	I Rod, Posada
1B	Pujols, Thome, Helton, Casey	Giambi, Thomas, Harvey
2B	Kent, Walker	Soriano, Uribe
SS	Renteria, J. Wilson	Jeter, Guillen
3B	Rolen, A Ramirez	A Rod, Mora
OF	Bonds, Griffey, Sosa, Drew	Vlad, Manny, Hideki, Ichiro, Crawford, Wells
P	Pavano, Glavine, Livan, Schmidt, Hoffman, Johnson, Ggne, Sheets, Clemens, Penny, Zambrano, Od. Perez, Clement	Rogers, Mulder, Nathan, Sabathia, Schilling, Vazquez, Hudson, Wetbrook, Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Francisco Cordero, Guardado

posted by The Crank 10:16 AM