It's almost July, which means it's almost time to complain and moan about who gets selected to go to the All-Star Game.
The fan voting wraps up in a couple of days, which will provide the eight starters for each team. The player vote is supposed to add another 23 players for each side, and a final fan vote is supposed to choose the 32nd man. And every team is supposed to be represented? I think so - and it's not that hard, anyway.
There is always going to be a dispute as to whether we are choosing real genuine all-stars (Mr Barry Bonds, anyone?), or guys who happened to get hot for a few weeks (I'm looking at you, Matt Holliday). I don't think anybody knows what the standard is supposed to be. Whatever lets me fill out the roster, I suppose.
Anyway, here is a possible AL team (fan-voted starters in bold):
Baltimore - Miguel Tejada
Boston - Jason Varitek, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Curt Schilling, Jon Papelbon
Chicago - Paul Konerko, Jim Thome, Jose Contreras, Mark Buehrle, Bobby Jenks
Cleveland - Travis Hafner
Detroit - Ivan Rodriguez, Kenny Rogers
Kansas City - Mark Grudzielanek
Los Angeles - Vladimir Guerrero
Minnesota - Joe Mauer, Johan Santana
New York - Robinson Cano, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, Mariano Rivera
Oakland - Barry Zito
Seattle - Ichiro Suzuki
Tampa Bay - Carl Crawford, Scott Kazmir
Texas - Hank Blalock
Toronto - Troy Glaus, Vernon Wells, Roy Halladay, B.J. Ryan
The Yankees could end up with yet another starter if Johnny Damon overtakes Ichiro Suzuki, who pretty well has to go to the game anyway if Seattle is going to be represented. And injuries will play their usual role - Robinson Cano just went on the DL, and may or may not be back in time.
By position, the roster has three catchers (Varitek, Rodriguez, Mauer); four 1b/DH (Ortiz, Konerko, Thome, Hafner); two 2b (Cano, Grudzielanek); three 3b (Rodriguez, Blalock, Glaus); two shortstops (Jeter, Tejada); six outfielders (Ramirez, Guerrero, Suzuki, Damon, Wells, Crawford) and twelve pitchers (Schilling, Papelbon, Contreras, Buehrle, Jenks, Rogers, Santana, Rivera, Zito, Kazmir, Halladay, Ryan)
Find places, if you can, for Justin Verlander, Tadahito Iguchi, Mike Mussina, Brian Roberts, Nick Swisher, Brad Wilkerson or anyone else that you think is particularly worthy. Who would you bump? And don't leave us with just two catchers, or one backup middle infielder, either....
A Possible NL Team
Arizona - Johnny Estrada, Brandon Webb
Atlanta - Andruw Jones
Chicago - Mike Barrett
Cincinnati - Ken Griffey, Bronson Arroyo
Colorado - Matt Holliday
Florida - Miguel Cabrera, Josh Johnson
Houston - Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt
Los Angeles - Derek Lowe, Brad Penny
Milwaukee - Carlos Lee, Chris Capuano
New York - Paul LoDuca, David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Tom Glavine
Philadelphia - Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Tom Gordon
Pittsburgh - Jason Bay
San Diego - Trevor Hoffmann
San Francisco - Omar Vizquel, Jason Schmidt
St. Louis - Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Chris Carpenter
Washington - Jose Vidro, Alfonso Soriano
The NL team has three catchers (LoDuca, Estrada, Barrett); three 1b (Pujols, Berkman, Howard); two 2b (Utley, Vidro); three 3b (Wright, Cabrera, Rolen); two shortstops (Reyes, Vizquel) seven outfielders (Beltran, Soriano, Bay, Jones, Griffey, Lee, Holliday) and twelve pitchers (Webb, Arroyo, Johnson, Oswalt, Lowe, Penny, Capuano, Glavine, Gordon, Hoffmann, Schmidt, Carpenter)
Find spots, if you can, for Derrek Lee, Barry Bonds, Jimmy Rollins, Morgan Ensberg, Norman Garciaparra, Craig Biggio, Bobby Abreu.
And on behalf of everyone associated with Da Box, best wishes for a full and speedy recovery to Peter Gammons. I am one of the few Bauxites old enough to remember when Gammons was the only indispensable baseball writer around. Unless you were there, you can have no idea how essential Gammons was, back in those prehistoric days before the Internet, before the Bill James
Baseball Abstract, when player stats appeared once a week in the
newspaper and generally didn't even tell you how many times a hitter
had walked. Come back soon.
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