2008 AL All-Star starters
Posted on July 5, 2008
Filed Under 2008 Season | 14 Comments
The MLB All-Stars aren’t supposed to be announced until tomorrow but apparently the geniuses at TBS have a bit of an information leak. The Red Sox have 4 players on the starting roster, including David Ortiz who will attend the game but won’t be able to play. The full AL roster is as follows:
C Joe Mauer
1B Kevin Youkilis
2B Dustin Pedroia
3B Alex Rodriguez
SS Derek Jeter
OF Manny Ramirez
OF Josh Hamilton
OF Ichiro Suzuki
DH David Ortiz*
This will be the 1st All-Star appearance for Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia. David Ortiz, although he won’t play, has made the team for the 5th time while Manny Ramirez has been selected for the 12th time in his career.
* Milton “Don’t call me crazy!” Bradley will be David Ortiz’s replacement at DH.
Comments
14 Responses to “2008 AL All-Star starters”
Leave a Reply
You convinced me that Youkilis deserves the nod over Giambi and Morneau, but Pedroia doesn’t deserve to start at second base over Ian Kinsler.
Kinsler is not only the best second baseman in the AL, he is one of the best players in the AL. I think his great season is getting lost in the shadows of the Josh Hamilton story. In fact, Kinsler is the best offensive player in the American League right now. He’s first in VORP behind four National Leaguers.
J.D. Drew instead of Manny Ramirez, too.
It’s a crying shame that not only is Derek Jeter on the All-Star team with his lackluster season, he’s the starting shortstop, too.
I agree completely with Kinsler. Pedroia is having a hell of a season but Kinsler has him beat easily. Not only is his season being overlooked but so is that of Milton Bradley. They made the right choice subbing him for Ortiz.
JD Drew I also agree with over Manny Ramirez. Manny is not having a typical year despite his decently high OBP and HR numbers.
Ichiro and Derek Jeter are the biggest jokes on the starting roster. Maybe if the ASG was a stolen base contest then Ichiro might deserve it. As for Derek Jeter.. his numbers aren’t that much different than Ichiro’s.
While I don’t think Jeter should get the nod as the starting SS in the AL, it’s not exactly a “big joke” when you statistically compare him the to the rest of the AL shortstops. The fact of the matter is no AL SS is having a great season. Jeter is 2nd ranked (behind Michael Young) in batting avg, 3rd ranked in OBP (behind Lugo and Scutaro) and 3rd in SLG (behind Peralta and Young), and 3rd in OPS (behind Young and Peralta), and 4th in fielding percentage (behind Cabrera, Young, and Peralta). You can make a weak case for it, but I wouldn’t call it a big joke or a crying shame.
By contrast, Perdroia ranks 5th in fielding %, 4th in average, 5th in OBP, 3rd in SLG, and 3rd in OPS. Kinsler ranks 1st in all of those categories except fielding %. I’d say that’s a bigger joke than Jeter starting.
At least Varitek didn’t make the roster. That would have been a travesty. He doesn’t even rank in the top 10 in most offensive categories for catchers.
And there are a lot of better choices than Manny, namely Carlos Quentin, Jermaine Dye, Sizemore, Damon, Drew. I could go on.
You can argue Jeter is one of the best 2 SS in the AL. It’s definitely not a crying shmane he’s on the team. Stop hating. You can’t argue that Manny is one of the top 6 OFs. That’s a bigger joke by far.
Fan voting should be abolished anyway, or used as part of the selection process. The time is going to come where a guy like Varitek gets voted to the team when he has no right to be, and then it trivializes being named an All-Star. Thankfully, they got it right this time.
J-Boogie
First off, BA is a ridiculous statistic so scrap that from your argument for Jeter. Peralta and Young have him beat in every other category you listed except OBP (granted, the most important of them all.) How does this make Jeter one of the two best? Your opinion is clearly biased and ridiculous.
As for Manny and Pedroia, that point was already brought up and I agreed that both had better counterparts at their position. Why bring it up again when it has already been settled?
[...] addition to the starting lineup for the AL that I posted last night (link), the Red Sox have added another 3 players to the All-Star [...]
Really, baseball needs to do something about the fan voting. Every year the fan voting messes up something based solely on the most popular teams or country of origin. If this is supposed to be a game that matters, then the players that are performing best should be the ones competing.
Make it 50/50 or something where the fan vote is only 50 percent of the determining factor in deciding the starters.
I mean come on. Kinsler is having one of the best years in the league; Manny isn’t worthy of a starting position; maybe Jeter is based solely on the ineptitude of the rest of the AL SS; Fukudome and Soriano in the OF for the NL?
I agree completely but it gets to a situation where voting seems as worthless as a Democrat in Texas. Why should someone vote for players that deserve it when the other millions of baseball fans just use it as a popularity contest? Your 25 votes for the best player are pretty much null and void when 5 million other people vote for their favorites.
The only decent way to do it would be to maybe let journalists vote for the players (like with the HoF) because that might minimize biases a bit. You can’t let the players do the other half of the voting because god knows they suck at it. They voted in Jason Varitek for god’s sake. Sure, he may be a respected player and good at calling a game but he is definitely not having an All-Star season.
How can you disregard one’s batting average as a measure of their performance? Peralta is hitting .250 (32 points behind Jeter) and his OBP is .299 (46 points behind Jeter). I didn’t say Jeter was one of the best 2, I said you could argue that he is, which you can. Peralta has Jeter beat on power and defense. They both have the same # of RBI, which pretty much negates the power aspect. Young is the best, hands down. #2 can be debated but you have to give Jeter consideration. There isn’t a clear cut #2.
I brought up Pedroia and Manny in my comment to illustrate that they are bigger jokes, or crying shames, for being voted in than Jeter. Disgareeing with that only shows your bias, especially with Manny.
As for fan voting, i always liked the idea of maybe the fans vote on nominees, like the top 5 from the fan vote are presented to the players/coaches/writes, etc and they take it from there. Something like that. Fan voting to me trivializes the title of all-star.
First off, BA is a ridiculous statistic. It holds some merit but it’s not a very good stat. BA is, for the most part, a random statistic. You can’t use the number of RBIs as something that negates their power. If you think the OBP of the Indians rivals that of the Yankees, you’re nuts. I haven’t looked up the number but I’m willing to bet that Jeter has gotten to hit with runners on quite a bit more than Peralta has. But you’re right, there is no true #2. SS in the AL is extremely lacking.
What am I disagreeing about? You must have trouble reading, I’ve said about 4 times now that neither Manny nor Pedroia deserve to start. Not much bias in that whereas you’re protesting that it ISN’T a complete joke that Jeter is starting. He isn’t the best at his position so that makes it a joke.
As for who should be on the All-Star team.. you’ve got me. I can’t think of a good way to do it. If the best players play, the majority of “fans” probably won’t even watch it. Probably 90% of the people that watch the All-Star game couldn’t even tell you how long Ian Kinsler has been in the league.
On a separate note, the NL’s roster is even more of a joke. Nate McLouth as a starter but Pat Burrell has to be a reserve? Seriously?
Even worse, I was assuming Burrell was a reserve. He hasn’t even been elected to the team yet. Are you kidding?
I’m not protesting that Jeter starting isn’t a joke. He shouldn’t be. i’m trying to argue that it’s not the biggest joke as you commented above.
As for Jeter and Peralta’s chances with RISP, Jeter is hitting .308 in 78 ABs. Peralta is hitting .228 in 79 ABs. Jeter has 3 more ABs than JP with runners on. Peralta’s #s are pretty abd with runners on. That just furthers what everyone is saying, the quality of SS in the AL is lacking.
Burrell getting left off is pretty bad. But at least he’s on the final vote. Xavier Nady got the shaft. Not sure how McLouth got the nod over him as the Pirates rep.
It’s definitely not the biggest joke. Both rosters are a joke, period.
As for the runners on thing, look for numbers with runners on base, not just RISP. Peralta has more HR and 2B so as long as a runner is on, he doesn’t need to be in scoring position to score.
Yeah Xavier Nady got completely screwed too. Him and Burrell might be the biggest NL mistakes.
JUSTIN MORNEAU SHOULD DEFINITELY BE THE STARTING FIRST BASEMAN, BUT ITS THE FAN’S CHOICE, SO GO FIGURE…
I disagree completely. His numbers are worse than Youkilis’ in almost every single category. If you want to make an argument for anyone over Youkilis, it would have to be for Giambi.