Sports Media Review by Jonathan Weiler

On Monday’s ESPN Insider, Jayson Stark (whom I like a lot) lambastes what he calls “the dumbest rule in baseball: The one that says every team deserves its own All-Star.”

What has finally sent Stark over the edge? Mark Redman. The Kansas City Royals are a god-awful baseball team (and what does it say about the Yankees that they have just signed two players that weren’t even good enough to play for Kansas City?!). But, because of this rule, the Royals have to have somebody on the team. And, that somebody is the god-awful Mark Redman. Redman is 5-4 this year, arguably a miraculous performance on a team that has won only three games all year (OK, slight overstatement). But, Redman also sports a 5.59 ERA (a little context: the team ERA is 5.76 – they really suck). In 74 innings, Redman’s given up 82 hits, ten dingers and managed just 30 strikeouts, while walking an equal number of batters. Bottom line: He Blows. Big Time.

Stark continues:

"Oh, there's some merit in that rule. No doubt. It's charitable to the needy. It's empathetic to the downtrodden. It's a gesture that says everyone is equal in this game, at least for a few hours in July. And friends, those are true all-American values.

But please. We have to have our standards, don't we? We have to establish some minimum set of numbers for a team to have an All-Star, don't we?

And no matter where we set those standards, Mark Redman can't possibly meet them."

But, I’m not sure that the all-star per team rule is the real culprit here. What seems more responsible is baseball’s ongoing obsession with a pitcher’s wins and losses, a stat that may be more weakly related to a player’s actual performance than any other statistic in the game. Don’t get me wrong. At the top of the pitching pyramid, among the likes of Clemens, Maddux and Pedro, wins and losses, while a deeply flawed measure of pitching excellence, is a decent enough short hand. Those guys are going to win the vast majority of their games because they are, game in and game out, simply better than the opposition. Their won-loss records, though not the perfect embodiment of their superiority, do reflect it. But, as you move down the pitching food chain, the noise in that data gets louder and louder. Redman was picked for the all-star team because he’s 5-4. And, he’s 5-4 out of sheer, dumb luck. He’s been a terrible pitcher this year, regardless of how baseball apportions decisions to pitchers.

Last night, Steve Phillips, in one of his many ramblings as color commentator on ESPN’s broadcast of the Yankees-Indians games, asserted that Kenny Rogers should be the AL's starting pitcher in next week's all-star game. Now, Rogers has done a very nice job for the Tigers this year, a veteran anchor for a sensational and otherwise very young pitching staff. But, he can't be one of the ten best starters in the American League. Let’s compare, for example, Rogers’ performance to Johan Santana. Rogers is a nifty 11-3, with a solid, though unspectacular 3.85 ERA. In fact, a good case could be made that Rogers has been the fourth best starter on his own pitching staff this year. Despite his inferior 7-4 won loss record, Jeremy Bonderman has otherwise out-pitched Rogers in every way – he’s given up fewer homers (6 to 15), has a lower ERA, has allowed fewer hits, struck out forty more batters in 110 innings than Rogers has in 114, while only issuing three more walks. Bottom line: Bonderman’s better and he didn’t even make the team. Nor did Justin Verlander, who’s also been much better. But, I digress.

Johan Santana is the best pitcher in the American league and has been for three years running now (though his young teammate, Francisco Liriano is going to give him a run for that title soon). Santana’s pitched 124 innings, and allowed 100 hits, ten fewer than Rogers. He’s also walked 23, four fewer than Rogers. So, he’s given up fourteen fewer baserunners in ten more innings and three fewer home runs. He’s got double Rogers’ strikeout total. And, oh by the way, Rogers pitches in an extremely friendly park for pitchers. Santana does not. His ERA, 2.76, is more than a full run lower. Santana’s vastly superior, but has a 9-4 record. The only thing Rogers has done better than Santana this year is pitch in front of a better offensive team.That's not skill.  

In one of his Baseball abstracts in the late 1980s, Bill James quoted Robin Yount on whether fans should get to vote for all-stars. Yount said that it depended on a simple question: if the game was for the fans, then, yes, they should get to vote for who they wanted to see in there. If the game was for players, then, no. Like Yount, I don’t personally care who the game is for, but MLB has decided that the game is for the fans, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. And, if the game is for the fans, then I think the minimum one-player per team rule is also reasonable. What need not follow is that leagues make such obviously dumb choice for choosing that player. Granted, finding anyone on the Royals who “deserves” to make the all-star team this year is especially challenging. But, believe it or not, there is a decent candidate. David Dejesus is the Royals 26-year old centerfielder. He was hurt for a while this season, so he’s had fewer than 200 plate appearances so far, though assuming he stays healthy, he will certainly be qualified for the batting title by season’s end. Dejesus is hitting .323 with an extremely impressive .410 OBP and has pop, too, with a .500 slugging percentage. In fact, were he qualified, he’d have the second-best OPS of any centerfielder in the American League.

The fact that the game is for the fans means that we are always going to have imperfect all-star rosters. But, the fact that Mark Redman is on the team should not primarily be blamed on what is a fan-friendly rule, a reason to keep otherwise disconsolate Royals' fans connected to the game. He’s on the team as a result of an idiotic decision which is itself traceable to an idiotic obsession with an overrated statistic. Dejesus would be a fine representative to the game, a player of positive value to the team and one, I suspect, that Royals fans would much rather see than Redman. It’s not the rule’s fault that the League got this one so badly wrong.

 Update: I just happened to check the Baseball Prospectus website, which includes a list of pitchers' luck. By their measure, Rogers is tied with Freddy Garcia for luckiest pitcher in the AL so far this season.

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