Schadenfreude

Major victories do not come often for the Royals. As far as relatively recent history goes, we mostly just have that time we swept the Cardinals in St Louis. The next best thing is for the Yankees to lose. If we are the ones to beat them then so much the better, but watching the Yankees lose when it really matters almost literally leaves a sweet taste in one’s mouth. There are many things to hate about the Yankees: their arrogance, their selfishness, the fact that they think they are entitled to victories and the fact that their glory hunters fill Kauffman Stadium every time they come to town. Robinson Cano recently added another one by snubbing Billy Butler for the Home Run Derby. Billy is not quite a bona fide home run hitter it is true, but he is having a very good year and has actually hit more home runs than Prince Fielder right now. More importantly, however, the Home Run Derby is there to put on a show for the fans and the show would have been a lot nicer with Billy Butler playing in front of his home town crowd. It does not matter which league wins, in fact more than a few Royals fans were cheering for Carlos Beltran of the National League!

But Cano, after hinting that he might choose Butler, chose Mark Trumbo instead. He decided that his league winning a meaningless contest was more important than entertaining the fans who were paying to watch. It was a very typically Yankee thing to do; he may as well have actually stuck two fingers up at the fans. But Royals fans are a mostly knowledgeable bunch. They recognised the snub and responded appropriately: they booed Cano in batting practice, they booed Cano when he was announced and they booed him when he came to the plate whilst mixing in some ‘Billy Butler’ chants. All that was to be expected, but where they really shone was that they never let up. It would have been easy to throw some boos at him and then return to ‘normal service’, but they did not. They booed every pitch to him and roared every time he failed to hit a home run. It clearly got ot Cano who stepped out twice to towel himself off and take another drink of Gatorade. No other player had stepped out at all as far as I had seen. His reception continued and Cano did not manage to hit a single home run, the only player to so fail. Cano snubbed Kansas City and was brought to his knees by our fans. It almost tastes as good as Alex Rodriguez striking out to end the Yankees season last October. I have never been prouder to be a Royals fan; we may be few but we are the best in baseball.

Problems with the All-Star Game

I have been following the build up to the All-Star Game this year as it is taking place in Kansas City. I’m really happy about it being in KC and I’m quite looking forward to Kauffman Stadium being shown off in a major event (hoping there are more than a few appearances in October over the next few years too) but that is the extent of my joy. The reasons why I have stopped following the All-Star Game over the past few years have been rather forcefully brought back home.

The first is one on which I have touched already: the fan vote. I could accept the fans voting for the reserves, but they are simply not well enough informed to make the choice of starters. Prince Fielder at first base? Derek Jeter at short? David Ortiz at designated hitter? The ignorance on show is breathtaking. ESPN have a lot for which to answer, but in the end the fans should not be voting if they cannot distinguish fame from talent.

But it seems that the managers are little better. I was already unhappy with the Rangers’ manager Ron Washington after picking Aaron Crow as the Royals’ one All-Star last year. Make no mistake, Crow was having a terrific year and was not undeserving. But he was not more deserving than Alex Gordon who has having a career year and would go on to win a gold glove. This year Washington chose Billy Butler, an excellent choice, and no one else. Not one other Royal in the year we are hosting the All-Star Game. I know we are a sub .500 team, but I am not asking for a large number of players. Just some recognition that we do have quite a few good ones and that now would be the time to give our players the benefit! But Washington decided to choose his own shortstop, Elvis Andrus, over Alcides Escobar despite Escobar having a higher batting average (the highest of all AL shortstops at the time of the decision), having hit more home runs and being one of the two best defensive shortstops in the league with Asdrubal Cabrera (who did get picked) being the other one. It is an obvious and appalling show of bias. Washington also picked three more of his own players despite already getting three voted in. As I said, I did not really like him anyway, but after this bit of selfishness I am furious. I very much hope that not only do his Rangers not only blow their lead in the AL West, but that they are hit by a major scandal and that Washington has to resign in disgrace.

My annoyance does not end there, though that is its apex. Major League Baseball has finally moved away from the ‘this time it counts’ slogan for the All-Star Game, presumably deciding that everyone has managed to work that out now almost ten years after it first ‘counted’. Unfortunately they only stopped using the slogan, not the ridiculous practice itself. For those unfamiliar, currently the league that wins the All-Star Game gets home advantage in the World Series. This means that managers are supposed to make a special effort to win the game despite the entire set up making it hard to do so! No sane manager would approach a game he wants to win by having the best starting pitcher in the league go only two innings; he would expect at least seven out of the pitcher and be hoping for nine. I also doubt he would pick the best player at each position (or even make a misguided attempt to do so) for the rest of the lineup. Rather, one would want to pick the group of players who best fit together as a team. The set up the whole game is that of an exhibition for the fans, not one where winning is the primary goal. To make it otherwise decreases the spectacle.

It is a few years since I last followed the All-Star Game. As much as I am enjoying having Kansas City and Kauffman Stadium in the spotlight, (and I am very much enjoying it) I am rather looking forward to ignoring the whole ridiculous affair again next year.

I despair

I don’t like the All-Star Game, really. It’s great to have it in Kansas City and I am looking forward to it so much that I will be actually watching this year. (I have only watched one of the past five.) But there are still many flaws, the most prominent of which is the voting system used to select the starters. It assumes that those voting will make reasoned, informed decisions on the players they feel are most deserving. I don’t know if that assumption was ever accurate, but despite the fact that stats and highlights are at the fingertips of every single voter it is certainly not the case now. Another update to the current All-Star vote numbers was released today and with it another blow to my respect for the baseball watching public.

I blogged on the Armchair Selector giving my American League and National League All-Star Game picks. I certainly don’t insist on all of them; I would never suggest that anyone is stupid or ill-informed just for disagreeing with some of them. But some of the current vote-getters are just ridiculous. Mark Teixeira has 1,405,187 votes at first base in the AL, good enough for third place. That means that (assuming 25 votes per person) over 56,000 people think that a man hitting .252 with eleven home runs is a better choice than Paul Konerko who is hitting .359 with twelve home runs. At third base, Alex Rodriguez (a player who everyone seems to have forgot admitted to having taken steroids and was never punished) has 660,000 more votes than Mike Moustakas despite being a worse defender, having a lower batting average and having hit the same number of home runs when playing half his games in a much more hitter-friendly park. Evan Longoria has more votes than either of them despite not even having played enough games to qualify for the batting race.

That is insane and just two examples of the massive bias toward big clubs. Now, I can accept successful clubs getting more All-Stars. They are successful for a reason. But the problem is when players who are not even vaguely worthy of starting are getting over a million votes. Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira are getting votes purely by virtue of being Yankees; neither of them are having anything other than average seasons. This is ridiculous. A lot of the blame must be placed at the feet of the national channels, ESPN particularly, who show big clubs almost exclusively and focus extensively on the famous players regardless of how well they are actually doing. Players from smaller clubs get largely ignored even when they do well. (It’s worth noting that whilst ESPN is terrible about this, the MLB Network is actually rather good about giving all players and teams a fair look.) The fans who vote are not free from blame either though as they make the basic (and pretty stupid) error of assuming that ‘famous’ equals ‘good’ without doing any actual research of their own. Despite the fact that all of the relevant stats are on the same website as the online ballot. It’s a massive failure of both parties and leads to results that are frankly appalling.

Armchair Selector post: All-Star Selections

With the All-Star Game (in Kansas City!) not too far away, and more importantly with enough of the season gone that one can fill out a meaningful ballot, I have looked through the stats and video and compiled my starting IX for the American League and starting XIII for the National League over at the Armchair Selector. I’ve taken care to select players without regard to my own opinion of them (which is the only way Jose Bautista was getting onto the list) and only their actual performance. Do have a look and if you like them go vote for them!