All-Star Balloting

The All-Star balloting so far is interesting and, in some cases, a joke...

Jeter getting well over twice as many votes than the next short stop tells me that NY is overwhelming the voting with the "pitty factor".  Besides his hitting, there's really not much there -- yeah, yeah...leadership blah blah blah.  Statistically, he's a poor infielder and on the verge of being moved to first.  This is clearly a "gimme" for having him start in the last All-Star game to be played in that $hithole in NY.

OK, after having gotten that obligatory rip on the NYY out of the way, I'll work through the order...and I'll only look at the AL because nobody really cares about the NL, do they?  I have, by the way, put in my 25 votes.

First Base: Youkilis is a "no-brainer".  Enough said.

Second Base: I can get on board with Pedroia.  Scrappy lil' fellow.  I'm glad to see Kinsler getting some respect.

Short Shop: Already made my point above.  To be sure, the most insulting thing here is the number of votes he's received relative to 2nd, 3rd, etc.  He's not that much better.

Third Base: OK, he's been injured, but it's hard to vote against A-Rod.  Besides Hamilton, he is the best player on the planet even if he does choke in the post-season.

Catcher: Varitek has the lead, but I'd probably pull for Rodriguez.

DH: It's big Pappi.  Despite a slow start, I'd like to see anyone who'd not chose Ortiz to be the DH on their team.

Outfield: Hamilton at 6th is a joke.  He should solidly be in second, behind Ramirez.  The only good news is that, despite Ramirez's significant lead, the next 5 are fairly close.  Hopefully, the SI spot as well as common sense will set in and people will give Hamilton at least a starting position (3rd or better).

The link to the results so far are below.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080524&content_id=2763042&vkey=news_tex&fext=.jsp&c_id=tex