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Grady Sizemore is having a great year...he should be the #2 OF behind Magglio. Ugh..fans...
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I don't blame the fans, I blame Major League Baseball. All-Star balloting began in mid-April this year. How are you supposed to vote in an educated fashion when there have only been two weeks of baseball? That's why I wait for the last week of balloting before making my selections. I want to make my choices on the basis of who actually deserves to make the team. I only let my pro-Boston bias creep in if I'm debating between two comparable players.
Another thing to keep in mind is that All-Star selections tilt heavily in favor of players who get out to a hot start in April, May and early June. This means that guys who surge from late June, through July, August, September and into October, don't always get the recognition that they deserve. If you review the statistics of various All-Stars, you'll see that some of them tail off dramatically during the second half of the seaosn, and end up with overall statistics that are far worse than some of their non-All Star counterparts. So why not factor in the second half of the previous season when making your All-Star selections? That way, you give second half performers a chance to be recognized, and you also have more to go on than 2-10 weeks of the current season. When you look at it that way, some of the current leaders in All-Star voting (like Robinson Cano) actually deserve the No. 1 spot.
I think fans do a pretty good job when it comes to voting. Non-household names tend to make a major surge during the final weeks of voting as fans begin to notice their sustained success. If MLB allowed the fans to only vote between June 15 and June 30, I'm confident that the starting lineups would closely reflect the players who are most deserving.