All Star Bullets

We're now past the peak of All-Star voting and the usual arguments are shaping up. Should the fans select the players? If so, should they pick guys they want to see, regardless of current performance, or is it really a "Who's had a hot two months?" game?

There's nothing quite like looking at some evidence to see how these things are turning out, and we have such evidence in the form of a million or more ballots already, as well as how everyone's been performing. So let's take a look at the American League.

Here's the first base balloting so far:

John Olerud passed Carlos Delgado when the last round of votes was tallied. Is Olerud the most deserving of the start? He currently sports a fourth place (for 1B) OPS of .942 - excellent, but not as good as Giambi's 1.165 or even Jim Thome's 1.008. Of course, Olerud's team has been phenomenal, whereas the A's had a horrible start and have only recovered to the .500 mark, so nobody has really cared about Giambi to date except all seven of Oakland's season ticket holders. Thome, on the other hand, has just exploded recently and so wasn't really on anyone's radar early. Delgado looked good early but both he and the Jays have slumped and Doug Mientkiewicz is now performing about as well as radio announcers trying to pronounce his name. So Olerud may not be the best, but he is the best that's playing on a good team. Sometimes that's all you really want.

On to second base...

And here we have a very two horsed race. Perennial All-Star Robbie Alomar is going to have a hard time holding off the Mariner's Bret Boone in the final couple of weeks. Let's face it, whether you buy into RBIs or not, it's pretty impressive for a second baseman to be leading the league, passing Manny Ramirez in the process. Sure, he has two on base machines ahead of him in the lineup, but he still has to hit the ball. And to hark back to the argument about who should be picking the players, does anyone here think the managers and coaches would be picking different on this one? Anyone? Thought not... Oh, and Alfonso Soriano third? Give me a break.

Next we have shortstop:

Not much doubt here - the usual suspects, but with Jeter having a down year and Nomar on the DL, Alex Rodriguez has this to himself. Omar Vizquel gets a look because of Nomar's injury, and Seattle ballot box stuffing puts Carlos Guillen on the radar screen at fifth.

Moving around the diamond, we get to third base:

Third is perhaps the best contrast of the different voting strategies. At the top of the pile we have the aging, almost retired veteran superstar in Cal Ripken (.539 OPS). Right behind him we have up and coming third year guy Troy Glaus (.970 OPS - a hundred points ahead of his nearest challenger.) Then we have the real outrage with David Bell in third place with the second lowest OPS for a 3B at .608. So of the top three vote-getters we have the two worst offensive guys in the league, but for very different reasons. Then we have a resurgent Scott Brosius (a surprising third place OPS with .864) and inexplicably Tony Batista fifth. Here's where I think Glaus has proved that he's no flash in the pan and I'd prefer to see him over Ripken, but really, who can deny Cal one last hurrah? And let's face it - it saves the coaching staff for having to scrape for a mandatory Oriole when they’re filling out the roster.

What about catcher?

It looks like fans around the league just love those Rodriguez boys. Like his namesake, Pudge is leaving his competition in the dust. Like many other positions, we see a Yankee and a Mariner on the leader board, but without a chance of catching (if you'll pardon the pun) the leader.

And so on to the DH:

No contest here. Even if Frank Thomas wasn't MIA, Edgar Martinez would have walked this. The margin of victory is pretty close to the largest of any position, too.

Finally, we have the boys of the outfield, where we take the top three:

And here we have the third Mariner in a starting position in the person of the dynamic Ichiro Suzuki. Suzuki's impact on the game in terms of raw stats hasn't been that amazing, but how he has done what he's done is the big story. A hundred hits already, the ability to slap the ball just about wherever he wants to, the blazing speed, the rifle arm, all these things have made the myth bigger than the man. But that's what myths are all about. The we have Manny Ramirez in the outfield, although he's spent the entire year at DH. Add Juan Gonzalez and that's a potent outfield with a lot of variety. The second string of Mike Cameron (another Mariner ballot box beneficiary, although well deserved), Bernie William and Kenny Lofton isn't too shabby. And just in case you hadn't noticed, the atrocious Al Martin creeps into fifteenth place. His .578 OPS is just ahead of the A's Johnny Damon and last place OF Jose Guillen of the Devil Rays.

So we'd have a starting lineup of Rodriguez, Olerud, Alomar, Ripken, Rodriguez, Ichiro, Ramirez, Gonzalez and Martinez.

Listed out like that, it looks like Joe Torre may have to buy a "Z". Not a bad looking club, though. Three Mariners, two Rangers, two Indians, one Oriole, one Red Sox. If Boone does beat out Alomar it's going to make it close to impossible to take more than one Mariner pitcher which makes it look like either Sele or Sasaki may miss out. I'm sure there have been six players from one team on an All-Star team before, but not in the super expansion era, and not from a lowly West Coast upstart.

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