But are those suspensions equal? It’s easy to quantify the loss of Youkilis, his bat can’t be in the game, and instead the Red Sox will use just another combo of the Lowell/Varitek/V-Mart/Kotchman/Ortiz madness for those games. But nonetheless, the Red Sox lose arguably their best player for five games.

You could argue the same for Porcello. 5 games means he will miss his next start and the Tigers are going to have to find someone else to start that fifth game and then in another five days Porcello will make his next start. But is that what is going to happen? When a pitcher is suspended for five games, the idea is to miss his start given the 5-man rotation. In reality, teams often just push that player’s start back one day, and can almost always put in another starter on full rest in to replace them due to off-days. So it’s just not really fair.

In some ways the 5 and 5 suspension makes sense, because the idea is that a pitcher makes up a much higher percentage of the outcome of a game than a hitter. Maybe five hitter games equals one starting pitcher game, or thereabout. But in order to fully make this work the commissioner’s office should realize they should hand hitters five-game suspensions and pitchers a nine game suspension, to ensure the pitcher misses a full turn of the rotation. It’s only fair.

Neither of them. It’s Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins. Morneau was always bound to lose out to these two because you knew both the Red Sox and Yankees fans were going to “get out the vote.” (For more on the all-star game voting problems, take a look here.) But in truth, the guy who plays for the often-overlooked midwestern team is actually the best candidate. He is tied in RBIs with Tex, and though he has a couple fewer home runs, his average is some 26 points higher than the Yankees’ first basemen, not to mention the fact that he has more total bases. And compared to Youkilis, he hasn’t got the OBP, but then again, he has played in 16 more games than him, which matters a lot when you consider how much more valuable Morneau’s batting average is in relation to Youk’s despite being essentially identical. No matter how you look at it, Morneau has 83 hits, Teixeira has 66, and Youkilis has 58.

It’s not like Morneau is really dying in the polls. He’s roughly 180,000 votes back, but that will be enough to keep him out of  the race. He’ll still get to make the trip to St. Louis, it’s just that he deserves to start.

Oh and by the way, if I had another pick for AL first basemen, it would be Victor Martinez, who leads the league in hits and has a better BA than any of the other guys. Lucky for Tex and Youk, he’s listed as a catcher.