The MLB All-Star Game rosters have been announced. And with that comes the annual questions, should fans be voting on the starters? Last season a total of seven Royals were voted in as starters. This year, five Cubs were voted in as starters. One of them is Dexter Fowler, who is hitting .290 with seven home runs and 28 RBIs. Those aren’t bad numbers, but with those numbers and being on the DL he shouldn’t be a starter. Then there’s Addison Russell who while he does have 48 RBIs but is only hitting .242. Another is Ben Zobrist and Zobrist is having a good year. He is hitting .291 with 11 home runs and 43 RBIs. But he’s not Daniel Murphy, who is hitting .349 with 14 home runs and 56 RBIs. The other two, Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, definitely both deserve to be starting.
So again, should fans be allowed to vote? It seems like this happens every year. A bunch of players on one team get voted in, even though they don’t deserve it. Other sports do fan voting too but it’s different, because those All-Star Games don’t count. In the MLB, the All-Star Game determines who has a home field advantage in the World Series. Now that’s a conversation for another day. But whether you like it or not, it’s a thing. So why are we allowing fans to vote on something so critical? If the game didn’t matter it probably wouldn’t be a big deal, but it does matter.
One possible solution could be to not allow people vote for players on the local teams. If you are familiar with MLB.tv, it blacks out the local games. They could do something similar with the voting. It can pick up where you are located and you can’t vote for the local players in the area that you are. Something like that could possibly get more fair results. But who knows if things will change in future. For now, we will likely be having this conversation every year.
