DownSwinging.com

The MLB All-Star game is flawed. Yes, I know, the All-Star game is mostly about having fun, bringing good players together to joke around, watching a home run derby and playing a meaningless game where the starter lasts two innings. So given all of that, who cares if the voting system that decides which players make the game is a little flawed? Me.

There are two problems. Firstly, several years ago Bud Selig decided it was a great idea to change home field advantage in the World Series to the league that won the All-Star game, rather than just the previous alternating method. I have no idea what brought this ridiculous idea into his head, only about 10 percent of the players in the game will be in the Fall Classic. However, I do understand that the game is not exactly meant to be competitive, and this way it essentially leaves home-field advantage up to chance. I just would have preferred leaving it to actual chance, like a coin flip or something. Or just the old way. Whatever. But what I really have a problem with, is that when it comes time to measure a player’s career, maybe to consider them for Cooperstown, one of the many categories we look at is All-Star selections. How can these selections have any merit if I have to read articles like this? Fans stuff ballot boxes, teams with bigger fan bases vote more. Teams that are winning get people to vote more. The offensive starters in the All-Star game often are not the best people that could be out there, which creates a serious problem later on.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy with the way pitchers are selected, simply by the manager of the team that year. I like the fan involvement. I think there should be fan involvement. But what would be better would be waiting another week or two to put the ballots out, and having the ballots be smaller. Have the manager pick four or five guys from each position to put on the ballot. Right now every random guy that has started 15 games is on there. Jed Lowrie is on the ballot. Why? By making the ballots smaller it means that just playing in New York or Manny just being Manny doesn’t get you to the All-Star Game.