A/S voters, by and large, are voting for their favorite players, their home town or favorite team players, or players they are generally familiar with. World Series appearances breeds a great deal of familiarity.

The Texas Rangers were coming off of two WS appearances in 2010 and 2011. That's likely why Beltre got move votes than Cabrera in 2012.

The average voter doesn't care about defense, unless it's a player with a "one of the best ever" reputation like Ozzie Smith or Brooks Robinson.

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/11/2016 1:56:00 PM (view original):
That's a legitimate and not a sarcastic question, by the way. I would think that defense played some role in that voting process, but I could be giving the voters too much credit.

Too much credit.

LOL. Yost talking about how many RBI his A/S starters have. Doesn't he know RBI aren't important anymore?

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/11/2016 2:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/11/2016 1:56:00 PM (view original):
That's a legitimate and not a sarcastic question, by the way. I would think that defense played some role in that voting process, but I could be giving the voters too much credit.

Too much credit.

I imagine there are people (you may be able to think of an example) who just look up the current-season WAR leaderboards and vote largely based on that. Those people would incorporate defense, albeit not very well.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/11/2016 2:39:00 PM (view original):
LOL. Yost talking about how many RBI his A/S starters have. Doesn't he know RBI aren't important anymore?

I imagine he doesn't know. Or he doesn't care.

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/11/2016 2:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/11/2016 2:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/11/2016 1:56:00 PM (view original):
That's a legitimate and not a sarcastic question, by the way. I would think that defense played some role in that voting process, but I could be giving the voters too much credit.

Too much credit.

I imagine there are people (you may be able to think of an example) who just look up the current-season WAR leaderboards and vote largely based on that. Those people would incorporate defense, albeit not very well.

I dunno. I think if they know enough to look up WAR, then they'd know enough to examine a lot of factors in making their choice. Most casual voters probably don't even know what WAR is.

But I wouldn't be surprised if 70% just voted for their teams players. I constantly get blasted as a fairweather fan in O's groups for telling people not to be homers - no one wants to see Ryan Flaherty or Joey Rickard in an all-star game.

Watching him play defense every day makes me not want to see Trumbo there.

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/11/2016 3:17:00 PM (view original):
Watching him play defense every day makes me not want to see Trumbo there.

Which is funny, because I believe you were on the "Markakis is an overrated fielder" bandwagon

So? That doesn't mean Trumbo can't be worse.

Markakis was a lot better than Trumbo. And a guy advanced metrics always got wrong.

Posted by Jtpsops on 7/11/2016 4:09:00 PM (view original):
Markakis was a lot better than Trumbo. And a guy advanced metrics always got wrong.

Markakis better than Trumbo doesn't preclude Markakis overrated.

So ESPN was running a special on the A/S game. They noted that the league leaders in Wins were given the starting job. Don't they know pitcher wins are meaningless?

They probably know.

I wonder why these people who are far more involved/informed about MLB than I keep talking about these useless stats? Just weird.

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/11/2016 2:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/11/2016 2:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/11/2016 1:56:00 PM (view original):
That's a legitimate and not a sarcastic question, by the way. I would think that defense played some role in that voting process, but I could be giving the voters too much credit.

Too much credit.

I imagine there are people (you may be able to think of an example) who just look up the current-season WAR leaderboards and vote largely based on that. Those people would incorporate defense, albeit not very well.

No one I know looks up WAR to figure out who to vote for. No one. Not a one. Who are these people you speak of?