Your All-Misfit MLB All-Star Team

Every year, the MLB All-Star game promises us at least 9 innings of half-assed baseball, which usually feature an American League team comprised entirely of Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels starters. So much for variety--and that's even before five Cardinals take the field for the National League.

The consequences of this trend are dire. Mark Loretta has started an All-Star game (as a member of the Red Sox). So has Shea Hillenbrand (ditto). And, horror of horrors, so has David Eckstein (the Cardinals Effect).

This is to be expected, as fan voting for All-Star starters is nothing but one big fat popularity contest that the biggest and most visible franchises almost always win. Obviously, this is not a new insight, nor is it endemic to professional baseball. What I have noticed, though, is that the vast majority of the All-Star electorate doesn't really care about mediocre performance as long as they see a name they have heard before. Sport imitates life.

I pondered this as I watched the Phillies-Cubs game last night, flossing my Ryan Howard jersey (even though he didn't play), watching Chase Utley get plunked for the twelfth time, and clutching the All-Star ballot given to me by the overly suspicious corps of Phillies ushers. I thought about voting for the players that contribute the most to their team, regardless of their public stature. This is my usual custom.

But then I noticed that every single (projected) starter for every single major league club gets put on the ballot, and that's when I decided that the entire voting process is a cruel tease for the 85% of players who won't make the All-Star team. How do you think the fat kid with psoriasis feels when he sees the "Most Huggable" category in the senior poll? He knows he isn't getting any votes--at least not serious ones.

If performance doesn't seem to matter anyway, can't we try to make some poor schlub's career a bit more memorable? Consider this an appeal for an "All-Dilution" team: guys that have a starting job on a major league ballclub partially because their bodies were warm and, well, the Nationals have to put somebody at second base and center field.

Come on. Punch the chad for the yeomans of our national pastime. Do it for Ronnie Belliard. Do it for Mike Bordick. Do it for Junior Spivey, Ken Harvey, and Phil Nevin--each one adequate at best. And each one an All-Star.

The Baker Bowl's 2007 All-Misfit All-Stars:
(as found on this year's ballot; chosen regardless of current injury and on a basis of minimum 4 years of MLB service, no All-Star selections, and general mediocrity)

American League
1B: Ty Wigginton, Tampa Bay
2B: Mark Ellis, Oakland
SS: Juan Uribe, Chicago
3B: Nick Punto, Minnesota
C: Gregg Zaun, Toronto
OF: Emil Brown, Kansas City; Jay Gibbons, Baltimore; Craig Monroe, Detroit

National League
1B: Scott Hatteberg, Cincinnati
2B: Adam Kennedy, St. Louis
SS: Adam Everett, Houston
3B: Pedro Feliz, San Francisco
C: Miguel Olivo, Florida
OF: Xavier Nady, Pittsburgh; Terrmel Sledge, San Diego; Nook Logan, Washington

This Incorporated Community Lacks Sufficient Space For a Duo Like Us

Though this was a point I had already touched on in my mission statement, I felt the need to milk the Athletics-Phillies comparison a little more, mostly because of this nostalgic piece about the Boston Braves. Basically the article proposes that, until they left town after the 1952 season, the Braves were a more forward-thinking organization than the Red Sox and despite lacking similar on-field success, the Braves were poised to blossom into a model franchise.

Does that remind you of anything?

Ok, so the Phillies generally stunk even when the Athletics were around, and the A's got even worse when they moved to Kansas City. But are we really sure that Philadelphia kept the team that it really wanted?

Let us examine the facts in the intertwining histories of the four clubs:

• The Braves left Boston in 1953. They won a championship in Milwaukee within five years. The A's left Philadelphia in 1955. They would be the Yankees' de facto AAA club for the better part of a decade. The Phillies and Red Sox stayed put and would win a combined two World Series in the next half-century.
• The Braves integrated their team in 1950 and the Athletics followed in 1953. The Phillies and Red Sox were the last teams to integrate in the National and American Leagues, respectively--both milestones occurred after Jackie Robinson had retired from baseball.
• The Braves move to Atlanta in 1966, indirectly allowing Allan H. Selig to emerge from the Milwaukee wastes as a formless, diabolical metallic goo a la the T-1000. They are mostly terrible for the next couple decades, and everyone laughs at Ted Turner. The Athletics move to Oakland in 1968 and field some of the best squads in MLB history during the 1970s. The Red Sox are periodically dangerous. The Phillies win a title, and everything falls into chaos.
• Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Braves pioneer the "3 awesome pitchers and Mark Lemke" strategy and the A's pioneer the "buff sluggers who will alternately be quite willing and very reluctant to talk about the past" method. Both make multiple trips to the postseason. The Red Sox choke in '86. The Phillies blow it in '93.
• Both the Braves and A's engineer a sustained level of success by cultivating their farm systems and being choosy when it comes to re-signing their aging stars. Additionally, Oakland establishes itself at the vanguard of the sabermetric movement. The Phillies and Red Sox throw a lot of money around and frantically wave shiny objects to keep their fans distracted. Ironically, this works for the Sox while the others suffer chronic disappointment despite fielding competitive teams.

Say there, Phillies fan. Wouldn't you like an additional three championships? Wouldn't you like to be the buzz capital of the baseball world? Wouldn't you like to aspire to playoff mediocrity but, hey, at least you're making the playoffs?

Of course you wouldn't. I think the major difference is that the A's were rightly perceived as usurpers to many fans (despite all the winning), yet somehow the Red Sox were the heart and soul of Boston sports even after they mercilessly poached the Braves' fanbase and stole their traditions to pass off as their own, right down to the Jimmy Fund.

Philly might feel like more of an American League town, but the Phillies perfectly embody the city's massive inferiority complex--a place that was once the damn capital of the United States but is no longer a part of the nation's "first tier" of urban metropolises. And in a way, the Braves exemplify similar inadequacies as a place that was the past and present epicenter of Southern culture but at the expense of being associated with these guys.

But it's still fun to think what might have been in Philadelphia: Charlie O's elephant, Rollie Fingers's mustache, seeing Jose Canseco actually steal 40 bases, Barry Zito ghostriding with Pat Croce (you know it would happen).

Yet I'm glad it didn't turn out this way. "Oakland Oakies" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Home of the Braves? [The Phoenix]

Phillies Notes: Win Just 20 For the Gipper

While puttering around recently on the Baseball Almanac, I was dismayed to learn (not shocked--we are never shocked by bad news here) that the last Phillies pitcher to win at least 20 games in a season was Steve Carlton, who last pulled it off in 1982. Lefty accomplished this feat six times and even won an astonishing 27 games in 1972.

But since '82? Nothing. John Denny won 19 in 1983 and Curt Schilling sniffed at it a couple times, but it's mostly been a pipe dream since then. And you know something? It really doesn't have a lot to do with the pitchers themselves.

Sure, the Phillies have had some horrendous starters over the years (paging Matt Beech), but wins are an immensely overrated stat when used to evaluate pitching. This is Moneyball 101. Wins are much more reflective of the potency of the lineup supporting the pitcher, which tends to make more sense considering the rather anemic offense of the late 1980s and 1990s Phillies (even that 1993 squad lacked a true slugger). What I'm saying is that once you get Jim Thome, then it makes Kevin Millwood look that much better.

What's notable about this year's squad is that they already have two starters that have won 20 games in the past--Jon Lieber and Jamie Moyer--yet have never seemed like terribly gifted pitchers. No, if anyone is going to win 20 anytime soon, it will be Cole Hamels. Watching the Phils-Giants game on Sunday, I saw a performance even better than his line indicated (5 runs, some of them the product of poor fielding). His stuff simply baffles hitters. And with the kind of run support he gets--the kind that allows Adam Eaton to have a winning record despite an 8.18 ERA--twenty wins is not out of the realm of possibility. Even if Ryan Howard continues to resemble 2003 Pat Burrell.

Actually, Ryan, I take that back. That's not something I wish on anybody except Scott Thorman.

This Is Not How You Pursue the Urban Demographic

And this after all the progress made from Lil Jon's playoff blog and Snoop Dogg's interview. If enough of these photographs are taken out of context, the NHL can say goodbye to its core "millionaire rappers with hockey-playing children" audience.