An exhibition with consequences. I’m still not sure how much I love having it decide home field advantage in the World Series.
I totally agree, as a Jays fan, that it was slimy. However, it was actually collusion between the teams, not just the fans.
It’s a shame because Delabar is a neat story and deserves some attention for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.
A few days ago, I was wondering what the big deal about Puig was so I looked up his stats. I was surprised to see someone else on his team with nearly identical, but slightly better stats.
As of July 12:
Games/BA/OBP/SLG
36/.397/.429/.630 Yasiel Puig (RF)
36/.402/.458/.726 Hanley Ramirez (SS)
Hanley Ramirez is the starting SS for the National League team. He’s also a ROY, runner-up for MVP, an a multiple time All-Star. Puig is putting up his numbers in his first 36 games in the Majors.
Educate me, please–What makes it slimy? I admit I don’t know anything about what happened other than the outcome. How is it different from the Yankees trying to get David Robertson elected, the Dodgers trying to influence folks to vote for Puig, or for that matter, the enthusiastic boostering of their own players on the part of what seemed like all 30 teams in the election for ASG starters?
It wasn’t just that these teams encouraged people to vote for their guys. When you vote, you have to pick one guy for the NL and one for the AL. Atlanta (NL) and Toronto (AL) made a coordinated effort to encourage their fans to vote for their guy and the other team’s guy when voting. So, while Dodger fans were voting for Puig, you had all the Braves fans and all the Blue Jay fans voting for Freeman (Atlanta) and Delabar (Toronto.)
It sets a terrible precedent that is very likely to be copied by other teams next year.
Thanks, Lamar. Have to say it doesn’t strike me as sleazy, more a reasonable (and creative) response to the deck being stacked in favor of teams with very large fan bases.
True, Atlanta has a lot of fans and maybe shouldn’t have to resort to this kind of tactic; but a KC or an Oakland might never be able to get a player in past the Yankees/Red Sox axis without some creativity.
Obviously, not everyone’s going to agree with me about that!
Not copied next year, it was copied THIS year. The Dodgers formed an alliance with the Red Sox, The SF Giants matched up with the Detroit Tigers, and the Yankees lined up with the Washington Nationals.
Even before the alliances, Freeman was leading Puig. I honestly believe the voting was a response to the shameless pushing of Puig by ESPN. I should have grabbed a screenshot, but the night that the candidates were announced for the vote-in spots, ESPN was running a banner at the top of their homepage that promoted “Vote for Puig” and listed the text to use to vote for him. I assumed it was a banner ad for someone so I clicked on it, and it took me to ESPN’s MLB page. So it was their own content, not an ad.