Top Five Reasons You Can't Blame the Fans
Top Five Reasons You Can't Blame the Fans for Messing Up the All-Star Voting.
1. They're hitting a moving target.
MLB started their All-Star balloting sometime in late April. At the end of April, Victor Martinez held a gaudy .398 batting average, while A.J. Pierzynski had a .342 average. Joe Mauer had a good .319 average, but not spectacular. How were voters to know that Mauer would hit .388 over his next two months? Most fans evaulate All-Star selections based on their first halves. Well, the player with the best season statistics often change two or three times over the course of the voting. The All-Star voting is not a scientific survey conducted at that instance of the season. It is a two month process.
2. The media/players/coaches are no better.
Last year, a survey of managers and coaches selected Bobby Abreu as one of the three winners of the National League Gold Glove. In 2003, a select group of National media, refusing to yield to Alex Rodriguez, seriously floated the idea of Shannon Stewart, Most Valuable Player. You want to give the vote to these guys? What about the players, who given a choice to select reserve All-Stars, selected Shea Hillenbrand? The fact is that no matter what group you select as your voting population, you are going to have problems. At least when the fans make a bad pick, it is someone they want to see play ball.
3. The process leads to mistakes.
This is an absolutely key point, and it escapes critics all the time. Let's take a look at the American League voting. Fans are complaining that most of the players are either Yankees or Red Sox. The problem is not that the fans are all Red Sox or Yankee fanboys. The problem is the voting process coupled with either a plethora or lack of qualified All-Star candidates. As of the last voting, six of the eight leading starters were Yankees or Red Sox. Derek Jeter (SS), Alex Rodriguez (3B), Manny Ramirez (OF) and David Ortiz (1B) are perfectly reasonable choices. That leaves Robinson Cano (2B) and Jason Varitek ©. Let's look at those one at a time, because they illustrate the opposite points.
Jason Varitek, C
There are several good catchers in the American League. Varitek's production has declined, but he was an All-Star for the last few years. Jorge Posada's produced an .889 OPS this season. Ramon Hernandez leads A.L. catchers in home runs and RBIs. Victor Martinez was the best hitting catcher over the last two seasons, and he has not exactly fallen off the face of the earth this season. Now, you have a couple groups of smart fans. One will vote for "reliable stars," the other will vote for players with the best current statistics. Then you have the fans who goof around with the process.
Now hypothetically, let's say 70% of your fans are smart, 25% are clueless, and 5% are those who vote for players because Tigers sound cute and cuddly. The problem is that the 70% of smart fans have to vote for one player. They can not hedge their votes and list Mauer first, Martinez second, etc., like an MVP voter can. So if you have several good candidates at a position, a player who has broad appeal to a limited group, in this case a big name like Varitek, he will invariably float to the top of the All-Star ballot.
Robinson Cano, 2B
Same scenario, different specifics. In this case, you have smart voters choosing from several mediocre players to try and find the most deserving player. In this case it appears to be Seattle's Jose Lopez, but it takes a couple months for a player like that to emerge in the statistics, let alone the fans' consciousness.
4. Do the Math.
Catcher
1. Jason Varitek, Red Sox 831,154
2. Ivan Rodriguez, Tigers 803,964
3. Jorge Posada, Yankees 608,670
4. A.J. Pierzynski, White Sox 493,385
5. Joe Mauer, Twins 464,161
That's 3.2 Million votes among ONLY the top five. There is somewhere in the vicinity of five million votes total. That means Jason Varitek was selected by approximately 16% of voters, about 1/6th. How can you chastise the voters for selecting the wrong player when 5/6ths of voters did not even select him?
5. Most Voters do not have access to current statistics.
Go to the ballpark. Pick up a conveniently located All-Star ballot. You are a knowledgeable voter, you are not like those nitwits that pick all Yankees. But what do you have to go on? There's no listing of current statistics. You have names and a vauge recollection of what you saw in Sunday's paper, or Sportscenter highlights. Even smart fans are bound to make a funny choice or two under those conditions.
Many people cite ballots such as one listing say, Bernie Williams. Those ballots do not make a difference, and fans are for the most part wasting their vote. Fans do stuff ballots for their favorite teams, but fans from every city do this, and the votes often cancel each other out. On the occasions they don't, they are at least selecting players from popular teams. There are some problems with that I admit, but we have to face the fact that part of being an All-Star is name recognition.
You could give the voters a ballot that lists one through five and give them a complete printout of current statistics. We could give the voting to a select group of SABR's elite and let them debate in a dark chamber. But what would it improve? The current process selects the right players about 70% of the time, and the other selections are at least players the fans want to see. Some purists may scoff at that, but we need to remember that the All-Star game is an EXHIBITION, and it is for the fans.
Comments, questions, criticisms are welcome.
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