Monday, July 5, 2010

Bad Choices Abound in All-Star Roster Selections


You know, you can excuse the fan votes to an extent. I mean, anyone who picks up a ballot can cast a vote and a lot of players get votes when they are not as deserving due to their popularity or name reconition. However, when the MANAGERS and the PLAYERS get it so wrong, you just want to throw up your hands and wonder what in God’s name were they smoking.

This years All-Star selections are no exception. Some seriously boneheaded picks were made by Joe Girardi and Charlie Manuel as well as the players voting in their peers on Sunday.

Starting with the American League, we have two players picked by their own Manager in a move that screams nepotism. C.C. Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez make the roster despite fairly lackluster numbers, leaving such names as Jered Weaver or Fransisco Linerano and Alex Rios off the roster. Hell, even Andy Pettite was much more deserving than Sabathia was. With Cano, Jeter, Hughes and Rivera all on the team and deserving, the Yankees were MORE than represented. Putting those two on was ridiculous. Sabathia is likely to be taken off the roster since he is due to start on Sunday, but please take into account that 4 of his 10 wins are against the incrediabally bad Baltimore Orioles and Sabathia has obviously struggled this year. Is he having a BAD year? No. Is he having a better year than Pettite, Verlander, Weaver or Liriano? Not in the least.

In the National League Omar Infante, Ryan Howard, Arthur Rhodes and Roy Halladay made the roster, despite Infante not even being a starting player on his own team, and Halliday having a won loss record of 9-7, leaving Mike Pelfrey, Joey Votto, Heath Bell and Mat Latos off the roster. If Manuel needed to get a Phillie on the roster due to the loss of Utely to the DL, at least pick Jason Werth, who is MUCH more deserving than Howard this year. As for Halladay, no matter how great he is, his season has NOT been as good as Pelfrey’s or Latos’.

The choice of Infante must be one of the worst selections almost ever for an all-star team. It’s not like he was the only choice to be had from a bad team. Jason Heyward, Martin Prado and Tim Hudson all are on the roster (although Hudson is ANOTHER one who’s numbers don’t stack up to Pelfrey’s) from the Braves. It just doesn’t make any sense. In fact, his obvious problem with the Mets seems to honestly made him go out of his way to make sure he didn’t select Pelfry on the roster, since most of the pitchers on the NL roster are NOT having seasons better than Pelfrey.

Bad job as well as obvious hometeam picking for the two managers here.

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