Posted by kneeneighbor on 6/22/2010 9:38:00 AM (view original):
I am drawing a blank right now, who would represent the Nationals if SS is not there.

dunn? pudge? zimmerman?

I thought Pudge was injured? Sorry I dont keep up with AAAA baseball much.

Strasburg was one of the defining stories of this season even before he came up, so if he keeps this performance up through a few more pre-break starts, I'd absolutely support putting him on the All-Star team.

Posted by MikeT23 on 6/22/2010 9:14:00 AM (view original):
I think pitchers are chosen with a little better process.    Of course, I'm forced to believe Manuel and Girardi aren't entirely objective when choosing their staff.

Doesn't MLB do an "Add a deserving player who didn't make it" via fan vote after the A/S teams are announced?  Why not put SS on that ballot?

This.

Assuming Garret Jones is the all star with the Pirates (I think he is and MikeT agreed in the ask MikeT thread) it makes it hard to put Dunn on the team. Because if you put Dunn on you are running our of 1B spots for Howard, Gonzalez, Pujols etc...

Guzman is having a good year so he may be an option. Otherwise Pudge is a good option too.

The question is, will Strasburg really be taking a spot from someone more "deserving"?  What if he starts 5-0, and keeps up his current K/BB numbers.  Would that not be better and more deserving than the 15th or 16th pitcher on the NL team?  My guess is it would be.

As for having a Nats representative...one could argue that Strasburg will have done more for that team than anyone else if he starts 5-0 or better

He is listed as an OF.

Posted by kneeneighbor on 6/22/2010 11:13:00 AM (view original):
Assuming Garret Jones is the all star with the Pirates (I think he is and MikeT agreed in the ask MikeT thread) it makes it hard to put Dunn on the team. Because if you put Dunn on you are running our of 1B spots for Howard, Gonzalez, Pujols etc...

Guzman is having a good year so he may be an option. Otherwise Pudge is a good option too.

Christian Guzman (0.5 WAR) is not having a good year.  He is a league average defender.  His OBP is .327 and his OPS is .705, that is not good, it's bad, even for a shortstop. 

Over the course of the entire season so far Zimmerman (2.9 WAR) has been the Nats best player, by a big margin.  He also may be the best 3B in the NL so far.

Living in Pittsburgh, I don't like Garrett Jones (1.4 WAR) as the Pirates representative, McCutchen (2.1 WAR) has been their best player, once again by a big margin.  Offensively they're pretty close in value but McCutchen plays CF and Jones is a 1B/OF...

the fact is there are alot of 1B having great years in the NL (Gonzalez, Pujols, Votto, even Aubrey freaking Huff!)

What sort of bizarro world do you live in, where WAR is used to decide who gets All-Star spots?

Posted by antonsirius on 6/22/2010 12:36:00 PM (view original):
What sort of bizarro world do you live in, where WAR is used to decide who gets All-Star spots?

It is definitely not used to decide all-star spots...i just use it rather than post 7 different stats for each player...WAR is essentially a summary of some traditional counting stats...

But the main reason I included all the WAR stats was to show just how bad Guzman is, who someone said was having a "good" season.  And all I did was post the WAR numbers in parentheses after the player's to back up my argument a little bit.

i really should have included RBI and Runs though, since WAR doesn't take those into account, and they are used to select all-stars...it's just that I'm just not a big fan of RBI/Runs as a stat and I couldn't bring myself to do that.  When looking at McCutchen and Zimmerman I did note their run-producing totals...if they had been low I probably would have said something like "Zimmerman is the Nat's best position player but he probably won't be selected because he doesn't have many RBI's".  That's not the case though.  McCutchen's RBI total is low but he's been a leadoff man for a good portion of the season, and he has a lot of runs scored to make up for it.

Forgetting about WAR, do you think Dunn and Garrett Jones are more likely to goto the all-star game than Zimmerman and McCutchen?
 

Guzman is playing 2B and hitting .300. Aside from Utley I cant think of another 2B in the NL off the top of my head. Again I do not pay the NL much attention.

I did a quick search, the only other name i can come up with is Prado from the Braves.

Dunn won't. He'd be about fifth on the list of potential Nationals: Zimm, Livan, Capps (still the ML saves leader), Guzman would all get looks before him, without even getting into the Strasburg thing. Of course I'm assuming his batting average takes a tumble before rosters are selected... if Dunn's still hitting .280+ in a couple of weeks, he might squeak in.

Jones is doing nothing to warrant consideration over McCutchen. .315/.392/.479 with seven HR and 18 steals, versus .282/.355/.464 with 10 HR and six steals. Jones' RBI are nice but aren't even top 10 in the NL right now.