Today is the announcement of the 2006 AL and NL All-Star teams, so now seems like a good time to make my picks. I’m ignoring fan voting, but adhering to the stupid “every team must have one player” rule.
American League
C – Joe Mauer. He’s hitting the quietest .392 in MLB history and is at least partially responsible for all of those Johan Santana and Francisco Liriano gems.
Reserve – Ramon Hernandez. There is a big group of solid AL catchers that includes Victor Martinez, Ivan Rodriguez, and Kenji Johjima, but Hernandez has the best power numbers (15 HR and 59 RBI) of any of them.
1B – Paul Konerko. Look below and you will see some monster seasons, but I am going with Konerko, who his hitting a very nice .316 to go with his usual power and great defense for the defending champs.
Reserves – Jason Giambi (24 HR, 1.060 OPS), Jim Thome (25 and 1.034), David Ortiz (23 HR and 70 RBI), and Travis Hafner (leads the AL in OPS at 1.073, is hitting .310, and has 21 home runs to go with 62 RBI – plus, he looks almost exactly like Lincoln from Prison Break, so he gets some serious bonus points there). I know you can’t really have five first basemen, but with no DH this year in Pittsburgh, you tell me where to put these guys
2B – Jose Lopez. Lopez is having a fantastic season, particularly as a run producer. He easily leads all Major League second basemen in RBI with 57 and is putting together a breakout season akin to Jorge Cantu’s last year.
Reserve – Mark Grudzielanek. Chicago’s Tadahito Iguchi deserves this spot, but since there has to be a Kansas City player, we will go with Grudzielanek and his mighty .284 batting average. What a sham this whole thing is. If the Royals want to field a minor league team, why should they get an automatic rep? I know this argument has been made thousands of times, but it is just infuriating. 99% of fans don’t care if there is a KC player and those rare Royals fans are just going to be embarrassed. If this game is for the fans, then what fans are benefiting from this?
3B – Alex Rodriguez. In April it looked like Eric Chavez and his junk food diet were going to give A-Rod a run, but while the A’s are streaking, Chavez is slumping. In fact, the depth at 3B in the AL is pretty poor this year. Rodriguez isn’t having his best season, but .279 with 17 home runs, 57 RBI, and 8 steals is more than enough.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
You had me until you named two Devil Rays. Highly plausible, but c'mon Adam. The space-time continuum will be rifted, but do you really want to shoulder the responsibility with that?
2 - Adam Hoff
Well, the rosters were announced and here are the things that stand out at first glance:
- Ozzie Guillen continues to be a raging lunatic. First he can't stop spouting out offensive crap, now he's botching the All-Star rosters with relish. How he can justify taking his boy Buehrle over Liriano is beyond me. I have the former on one of my fantasy teams and missed picking up the latter when he broke into the rotation. TRUST ME, Liriano is better.
- Hafner and Giambi sitting this one out while Gary Matthews Jr. sports an All-Star uniform is going to be one of the biggest All-Star train wrecks in history. Even if you chalk it up to wanting an OF on the team, it should have been Crawford. Maybe instead of testing the players for roids, they should be testing the managers (and anyone else voting) for crack.
- Not sure how Zito makes it over Haren, when the latter has been quite a bit better than the former.
- Where's Nomar? He should have made the team over Sanchez.
- How does Turnbow make the team with a 4+ ERA, yet Isringhausen of the first place Cards is nowhere to be found?
- I mentioned Liriano as a prime AL snub, but where are Curt Schilling and Mike Mussina? After the twin Twin lefty aces, Schill and Moose have been the best starters in the American League. This is mind-blowing. It's like they got left off whatever stat sheets Guillen was looking at. I swear, this is making me angry.
In fact, I am going to shut this down. It's too annoying.
3 - Adam Hoff
Whoops, forget to address your D-Rays smack talk. I actually thought about leaving off Kazmir for that reason, but thought he was good enough to warrant a spot. As for Crawford, I just don't see how he can be left off the team (which he was, of course). He's one pace for 25 home runs and 55 stolen bases (not to mention 25 doubles and 12 triples), which would make him the third guy to do that in the past 30 years, joining Eric Davis and Ricky Henderson, both in 1986. That has to count for something. Sure, he plays for Tampa Bay, but the guy is still a stud.
By the way, all this 25/55 talk reminds me of Bonds' incredible 1990 season when he went 33/52. One of the most underrated seasons of all time, and the kind of feat that will pretty much be forever forgotten because of all the steroid stuff. Makes you shake your head and wonder why he had to put what was already a magnificent legacy at such great risk. What an idiot. Kind of like Ozzie Guillen.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
Re: Turnbow over Izzy
And that was Mee-lee-wah-kay's second All-Star. That's kind of interesting. I guess the argument for Turnbow is:
a) Fewer blown saves
b) Fewer walks
c) Team's performance is irrelevant
And Isringhausen's ERA isn't much better.
5 - Santa Clause
Jason Bay really deserves a spot on the starting line up. His numbers are amazing.
6 - fred spertybum
Where is Barry?!He hit what? 12 homers on bad knees without steroids. I mean c'mon cut him some slack!he's good nomatter what! and who's Dan Uggla? Baseball is ruined Pleese someone put bonds in instead of schmidt.Schmidt has loss three in a row.I'm done you weird people.