Baseball all-star voting

Great Debates
21

I think it’s a fairly safe bet that, considering a lot of the games happen at the same time, they don’t watch all that many. And given the awful nature of Gol;d Glove voting I have no confidence they’d do any better a job than the fans do.

Oh, gosh! He played exactly 28 games at first base. Well, that makes it a great choice, then. He wasn’t even the best defensive first baseman on his team.

dantheman: Actually, yes, I do think fewer people would watch if they weren’t voting. Not because they would consciously say “I didn’t get to vote, so screw it,” but because the process of voting itself hypes the game up.

And to be honest, I completely reject the tired old “If only the REAL fans voted” nonsense. Casual fans A) don’t vote as much and B) their votes will generally be spread over hometown favourites, with a bias towards superstars who should mostly be going anyway, not to mention C) in my experience, when people say “casual fan,” they mean “fans who disagree with me or know less than I think I do.”

Really, how often do the fans make REALLY bad choices? I’d say they’re every bit as good, and maybe better, than the writers who vote for MVP and Cy Young awards or the managers and coaches who vote for the Gold Gloves. Sure, the fans elected Sandy Alomar a number of times, but at least they didn’t give Pete Vuckovich a Cy Young Award, or give the same pitcher the Gold Glove year after year because they can’t be bothered to think about who to vote for. In fact, the vast majority of All-Star controversy comes not from the elected players but the reserves who were picked by the managers and Skeletor (Bud Selig.) This year’s All-Star choices all seem like reasonable, defensible picks to me. I do not see one shred of evidence that anyone else would be better at voting for the All-Star teams. None.

22

I can’t argue with your experiences, of course, but look at the voting processes. When you vote at a ballpark, ushers are handing out ballots to every one of the 45,000 people there. It’s just folly to assume the majority of them are learned baseball fans, and it’s at least somewhat logical to assume many are day-gamers, i.e. folks going to one game here and there. And then there’s the online voting - yes, you have to have the gumption to go to www.mlb.com and vote, and most who go there must have more than a passing interest in baseball, but there’s the whole issue of voting 25-30 times, which is nothing more than ballot stuffing. [By the way, you disagree with me, but I’m not calling you a ‘casual fan’ :)]

Hold on, there. The reason the starting lineups don’t garner any controversy isn’t necessarily because they’re the right choices. Who chooses the starters? Fans. Who cares about controversy? Fans. Who creates and examines controversy? Media. If the starters were chosen by the managers or the owners or the players, and the same ratio of good-to-bad choices was made as with the fans and their balloting, there would be controversy galore. But the media figures, "Hey, the fans picked these guys. The fans read our columns. There’s no point to us bitching about their selections. Whereas if players, managers, or owners picked em, there would be a villain.

Well, this could be another thread entirely, but did Vuckovich definitely not deserve the Cy? I’m not asking if someone deserved it more, but was he clearly a wrong choice in - what was it - 1982?

I couldn’t find a definitive history of voting for the All-Stars, although I only had the chance to look at mlb’s site. I’d like to know when fan balloting began and how “accurate” the selections were made before it began.

23

If I thought it was really IMPORTANT who plays in a meaningless exhibition game, I’d be willing to argue for a new system of selecting All-Stars. But since it ISN’T important, I don’t see what’s so terrible about letting fans pick the players they think are most deserving.

Are some fans lazy or ignorant? Sure. Do some have their biases? Of course. But before you use that to disqualify them, you’d have to find a NEW group of voters that’s never ignorant, lazy or biased. Where do you expect to find such a group?

The sportswriters generally do a pretty good job of selecting MVPs and Cy Young Award winners… but they’ve made some foolish choices, and several times, they’ve passed over clearly deserving candidates (Albert Belle comes to mind) for awards, simply because of personal animosity.

Managers are generally knowledgeable guys, but look at the controversy that ensues EVERY year, when managers stock the All-Star squads with players from their own teams! Sure, MOST of the players they pick are deserving, but face it: managers have strong incentive to choose players from their own teams, to make them happy.

As for the players, most are too apathetic to bother voting for awards, and when they do, they’re as apt as fans to take the lazy way out (i.e. just look at the newspaper, and vote for the guy who has the highest average or the msot homers). And players are just as biased as anyone else, just as motivated by personal likes and dislikes. You think a PLAYER would ever vote for a former “scab,” even if he were batting .350? If Robin Ventura had a vote, you think he’d have elected Nolan Ryan to the Hall of Fame? Think Johnny Roseboro would’ve voted for Juan Marichal?

So, what’s the alternative? Shall we have Bill James run a computer program to determine “scientifically” which player is “truly” the most productive? Oh joy, THAT would be fun.

Look, it’s a meaningless game, played for fun. And baseball awards are ALSO meaningless. They’re given for fun.

So, if you don’t like the current All-Star team, feel free to make up your own All-Star squad. And if you don’t like the current awards, feel free to start your own award, and bestow it on whomever you like. But lighten up! It’s just a game, you know.

24

I’ve thought about this a fair amount, and after a lot of back-and-forth internal debating that mirrors the above discussion, I’ve decided it’s pretty simple after all. I’m with RickJay on the key element: Let the fans vote, period.

Why? Because this is, by definition, the All-Star Game. Let me emphasize that: All-Star. What makes a star? Fan interest. Not this stat or that stat, or mutual player respect, or some ephemeral quality of purity of baseball essence, or whatever.

If you’re going by, say, value at position, there are always people overlooked. On my Mariners, John Olerud is a perenially underrated first baseman. He does his job quietly and consistently and doesn’t attract attention. He’s still one of the top two or three first basemen in the American League. He came in, what, fifth in the voting? Point is – great player; not flashy; not a star.

You want to call this honorable but essentially meaningless exhibition game something else, fine, we can modify the selection process. But as long as it’s the “All-Star” game, nobody but the fans should choose the starters.

25

Cervaise–Y’know, you’re absolutely right.

My above suggestion might produce two teams of the best possible players from each league, but they wouldn’t necessarily be the biggest “stars.”

26

Actually, I specifically cited Vuckovich because he is probably the worst Cy Young selection of all time. It probably should have gone to Dave Stieb or Dan Quisenberry.

And of course I could cite a litany of bad awards selections, and REALLY bad awards selections.