THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

And Greinke and Youkilis....and on and on....

The way the rosters are constructed is a joke.  20 years from now, someone is going to cite this as a reason to vote against Felix for the Hall of Fame, too.

To assert that the fact that Felix missed the All Star Game means that he’s at best the 83rd best player in baseball is not up to your normal standards of logic.

I will not bother to explain.

I’ll assume it’s just hyperbole and hope that similarly flawed comments by others will also be treated gently (unlike how they are often received here).

Do people even look at All-Star games for pitchers?

I know they might for batters, because it can be viewed as a metric of their popularity and/or dominance among peers.

When it comes to pitchers, the 1st 2 things that seemed to get looked at are Wins and ERA, followed by Cy Young voting or strikeout rank.

In terms of the discussions of Blyleven, Morris, etc ... I don’t hear anything about ASG, but I do about World Series wins.

I do see All-Star appearances into the eternal Blyleven/Morris discussion. Blyleven was in two All-Star teams, Morris five.

(You know that when these two are both in the Hall—and both will go in—we’ll still be babbling about how much better Blyleven was than Morris.)

If Felix was good enough to hold the jockstrap of the immortal Omar Infante, then he would be an allstar.

His best shot would have been to get on the revolving door of guys named to the team so they can be honored but pitched on Sunday so he’s ineligible.  That’s how Sabathia/Cahill/Weaver/Bailey made it.

84th Strasburg is better

I guess that makes Ryan Zimmerman the 85th?

And Colby Rasmus the 86th?

They always talk about what the fans want, who would the fans pay to see.

Well, which are the 82 players that the fans would like their team to pay more for than Felix (and Zimmerman… sorry, I don’t follow the ASG much if at all… Zimmerman is a GREAT baseball player, one of the best in MLB… I didn’t know he didn’t make it)?

I just checked Zimm’s numbers… his current OBP and SLG is ABOVE his career totals, as is his UZR and DRS numbers.  What a sham.

Nellie Fox was on more All Star teams than Barry Bonds.  Del Crandall was on more than Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan.  Bobby Richardson was on more than Frank Thomas and Bert Blyleven combined.

All Star Games are pretty much awesome.

@11:

All of the folks you mention had a chance to play in 2 All Star games a year. Ridiculous though it may be, it is not quite as bad as you say.

11/12 - And there was a much smaller pool of talent back in Nellie Fox’s day since there weren’t as many teams.