So, Ian Kinsler gets surpassed by Dustin Pedroia late -- not a surprise, I don't think -- but Josh Hamilton does get voted in as a starter. Kinsler did get hosed by not being picked as a reserve, though.
Kinsler is part of the final 5 in the A.L., so you can still vote for him to make the team.
Ryan Howard in as a manager's pick? Howard continues his run as the most overrated player in baseball...
John Perrotto runs down who would be the All Star starters and reserves if it were up to him, and there are two Rangers -- Ian Kinsler and Kevin Millwood -- who make the cut.
Perrotto also has this odd note:
The Rangers are expected to make Angels right-hander John Lackey their top target in free agency next winter.
Lackey has had declining peripherals, has struggled with injuries this year, and is going to be looking for huge money. While the Rangers will have about $20 million drop off the books with Hank Blalock, Joaquin Benoit, and Vicente Padilla being free agents, they also are looking at big raises for Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler, C.J. Wilson and Frankie Francisco, and the financial situation for the Rangers is pretty well known. I guess it isn't out of the realm of possibility, but I'd be surprised if the Rangers went hard after Lackey.
The official ChiSox website says Scott Podsednik deserves to make the All Star team.
ESPN surveyed their "31 top baseball minds" to determine who should be the A.L. starters and the N.L. starters, and I'm at a loss as to why the top baseball minds had Aaron Hill in a runaway over Kinsler.
BP also has a new Transaction Analysis up, with Kahrl saying, in the Rangers section, that Julio Borbon is a fifth outfielder rather than a premium prospect. Borbon's future value largely depends on whether he's a plus defensive centerfielder who can be 10-15 runs above average in the field...if so, he's got a future as a major league regular, even if he's below average for the position with the bat. Kahrl appears to be completely disregarding Borbon's defense and writing him off as a prospect based on him not walking or having much power...
Keith Law had a chat session this week in which he mentions he'd take Justin Smoak over Clay Buchholz.
Jim Callis had a chat session this week in which he says he prefers Matthew Purke to Robbie Ross, and also says that he doesn't think John Mayberry, Jr., will stick as an everyday major leaguer.
Moneyball: The Movie is, of course, apparently dead, which I'm glad to see, but there is a certain amount of debate about why. Deadspin says it is because Steven Soderbergh wrote a crappy script, their sister site Gawker says that Sony had known about Soderbergh's script changes for quite a while, and apparently, MLB wasn't thrilled with some of the creative liberties being taken with the script, jeopardizing the film's ability to use MLB trademarks and the like, which was part of why Soderbergh was trying to keep the script truer to reality.