Its 85 degrees in New York today but that doesn’t mean its summer. Its still April, the first month of the MLB season but the 2011 All Star Ballot was already released. The All Star game isn’t until July 12, almost three months away. Who knows what could happen in those three months….
Sam Fuld, a career minor leaguer, emerged as a stellar outfielder for Tampa this year (or should I say this month) and made the ballot but who knows who will break out in May, or even June.
Likewise, Carl Crawford is one of the major’s top outfielders and a perennial All Star but he his hitting only .171 with four stolen bases and one home run. Perhaps by June he’ll deserve All Star mention but right now, what’s he doing on the ballot? Same with Josh Hamilton who has been on the DL with a broken arm for a couple of weeks now and isn’t coming off anytime soon.
I understand that the league wants as many people as possible to vote for All Star game starters. I understand that it takes a long time to accumulate all the votes. But there’s just no way of knowing who is deserving of the chance to be elected and who is not only 27 days and 20 something games into a 6 month, 162 game season.
I’m sure we’ll have much more to say on the All Star game and the voting as the game gets closer, stay tuned.
Also, in the spirit of this post, I’m not going to link to the ballot but it can be found at mlb.com.
-Max Frankel
