This is usually the time of the year where we berate the fans for voting in the wrong players to the All-Star game.  This year, however, the fans got it right for the most part.  The relatively new player vote is another story.

Sure, Carlos Guillen deserves the start over Derek Jeter, but Mr. November usually gets voted in with substantially less merit than he did this season.  Jorge Posada is having a terrific offensive season, but you can forgive the nod to Ivan Rodriguez because of his defense, and it's nice to see a Yankee get snubbed for a change, anyway.

Actually, the National League saw the great influx of homer New York fans this year.  Easily the two worst decisions by the fans were David Wright over Miguel Cabrera and Carlos Beltran over the myriad of better outfield choices in the senior circuit.  You could argue that among natural center fielders only Aaron Rowand is having a better season, but you could also argue that Eric Byrnes and Alfonso Soriano have both played more center this year than many starting All-Star center fielders of the past (I'm thinking Sammy Sosa).  Beltran does rank second in the NL in CF Zone Rating (though 4th behind Rowand in Outs out of Zone), so even this wasn't an atrocious mistake.

No, the atrocious mistakes occurred with the player votes.

I'm not sure what made MLB shift the selection of pitchers and reserves from the manager's responsibility to the players.  Maybe managers were sick of being criticized for their decisions.  If this year is any indication, I would rather have the managers doing it again.

All Jim Leyland did was select Victor Martinez and Johan Santana.  LaRussa wound up taking Albert Pujols, Rowand, Billy Wagner, Takashi Saito, and Jose Valverde.  LaRussa may have gone a bit closer heavy, but it's easier to use closers in an All-Star contest, as many starters cannot pitch due to their throwing schedules.  Jim Leyland could have selected a deserving outfielder rather than a defensively inept third catcher - particularly one of his own guys, Curtis Granderson or Gary Sheffield - but Martinez is not a horrid choice at all with his .926 OPS.

He and LaRussa left the worst choices up to the players.

Let us begin in the American League with Michael Young.  As we learned in today's Daily Top 10, Young has hit more line drives than any other player in baseball.  But the All-Star game is not intended for players who have hit into rotten luck, nor those who are poised to have a good second half.  It's for the guys who performed well for the first three months of the season.  Although Young has played surprisingly good defense in the second half, it does not offset the offensive advantages of Jhonny Peralta, Orlando Cabrera, and Brendan Harris.  The AL needed a Texas player, and it should have been Ian Kinsler, Kenny Lofton, or Eric Gagne.  Heck, Sammy Sosa would have been as qualified a choice as Young, and who do you think would add more excitement to the All-Star proceedings? 

Brendan Harris would have also made a more fitting All-Star selection for the D'Rays than Carl Crawford, as would B.J. Upton or James Shields have.  Shields, along with Eric Bedard and Joe Blanton, were horrible snubs made worse by the fact that they aren't even in the running for the Monster.com Final Vote.  The AL is packed with dominant starters, but behind JJ Putz and Hideki Okajima, there aren't any particularly exciting relievers.  Jon Papelbon, Francisco Rodriguez, and Bobby Jenks should have made way for some of these starters (one of them Mark Buehrle, necessarily) or at least Shawn Marcum or Eric Gagne for the sake of the Blue Jays/Rangers representations.

Over in the NL, we see the players continuing to have trouble finding a good representative from a bad ballclub.  Are players just not paying attention when they are playing bad teams?  How does Freddy Sanchez and his .706 OPS supplant Ian Snell, who has the third most pitching runs in the NL?  Worse yet, teammate Tom Gorzelanny, not Snell, is listed among those infamous Monster.com choices.  At least they got Dmitri Young right!

It also irks me that J.J. Hardy got in instead of Hanley Ramirez and Edgar Renteria.  Carlos Lee got in over several more deserving outfielders, but at least he was a good choice to represent the lowly Astros (Roy Oswalt would have been better).

For the pitchers, am I the only one suspicious that Brian Fuentes is appearing in his third straight All-Star game?  What percentage of his salary goes toward campaigning for this each year?  If the players were dying to reward a Rockie pitcher for succeeding at Coors, how about Jeff Francis?  Of course, while Francis would have been a better choice than Fuentes or Cole Hamels, he still would have been a worse choice than  Snell, John Maine, or any of the Monster.com pitchers not named Carlos Zambrano.

After years of berating fans and managers, it's startling to realize that they were usually doing a better job than the players would this year.

Keith's Moster.com picks:

AL - Hideki Okajima

NL - Brandon Webb (but anyone other than Zambrano would be OK)