All-Star Lame

I don't have a terrible amount to say about the All-Star Game at this point, aside from the fact that staying up until almost one in the morning just to watch your team is at least less disappointing when the outfield of "your team" is made up of three players you hate. Anyway, a few lingering thoughts:

1. The Cubs acquitted themselves well.
With eight Cubs named to the roster in one form or another and six seeing time, two as starters, they had a lot to live up to. Fortunately, they mostly did. Soto and Fukudome didn't do much at the plate, but Soto caught a good few innings (the two steals off him were much more the pitcher's fault). Zambrano was awesome (can he please get through two innings in 20 pitches more often in real games?), Dempster was awesome (striking out the side!), and Marmol was awesome. Dempster and Marmol both pitched in the bottom of innings that could have ended the game, so I was immensely relieved that both pitched well, although I'd have taken just about anything that didn't end with a Cubs pitcher giving up the game-winning run. (The 2001 All-Star Game, when Jon Lieber gave up back-to-back home runs in the sixth to put the game pretty much away, still makes me cringe.)

2. "This time it counts" is still stupid.
As has been pointed out in various places by now, there is no good excuse for claiming that the game needs to count, especially when it's clearly not being managed that way. The lineup that the National League had on the field at the end of the game was kind of pathetic - there's no reason that any All-Star Game that "counts" should be giving three at-bats to Cristian Guzman. What would be wrong with going back to just alternating home-field, which is how it used to be done?

I mean, this is how All-Star Games are played. The best players (mostly) start the game, and then the lesser All-Stars off the bench come in to get a little playing time and finish it out. This is fine when the game doesn't count, or if it's a blowout, but in a tight game where the outcome has any kind of resonance, that kind of thing just doesn't fly. Bringing in Cristian Guzman to pinch-run for Aramis Ramirez was a calculated "let's play for one run" risk on Clint Hurdle's part, but then why did he make no effort to get Guzman into scoring position, choosing to let Corey Hart swing away? Having a man on first and no outs leads to a run more often than having a man on second with one out, but having a man on second with one out leads to a run more often than having a man on first with one out, and Corey Hart's not a bad player but his OBP is only .327 this year. At the very least, it would have been nice if Hurdle had considered that the game might go to extra innings, at which point Ramirez would be a more valuable asset at the plate than Guzman, who may have a lot of hits but only gets on base 34% of the time. Ramirez's OPS+ is 133; Guzman's is 102.

Basically, when you've got Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols on your team, it's pretty weak to finish the game with Adrian Gonzalez at first base. When you've got Chipper Jones, Aramis Ramirez and David Wright on your team, letting Cristian Guzman get three at-bats at third base is unacceptable (to be fair, Wright was DHing, but still). In VORP terms, the NL starting lineup was almost 90 runs better than the AL starting lineup, in spite of the fact that it had the least-valuable player on the field in it (Fukudome, just 11.9, sad to say). By the time the 15th rolled around, the AL now had the more valuable lineup on the field, aided in part by the fact that the most valuable guy in the AL, Ian Kinsler, was coming off their bench. In fact, Kinsler and Grady Sizemore, two of the three most valuable players in the American League, both got five at-bats for the AL. The most valuable guy by VORP left for the NL in extras was Dan Uggla; look how that turned out.

I know it would be kind of ridiculous to make, say, Pujols play a full game while other guys are being rotated out just because he's the best player in the NL. And there's something to be said for trying to strike early, I guess, or for not holding chips on your bench for an inning you might not play. But it just seems like the current format is likely to lead to games like this - close affairs that end up being decided by guys who are barely legitimate All-Stars. Just look at some of the last few out-making batters for the NL in recent games:

2008: Nate McLouth, Russell Martin, Miguel Tejada, Uggla, Gonzalez, Guzman
McLouth has been valuable this season, but he could easily turn out to be a first-half wonder. Martin is a good catcher but Brian McCann, with the highest VORP of any catcher in baseball, probably should have made it into the game first. Tejada and Guzman were both sympathy All-Stars (i.e. the only selections from their crappy teams and not deserving on merit, although Tejada played well so fair play to him). Uggla was more deserving of being there than his performance indicated. Gonzalez has had a good year, but he was also a sympathy All-Star as the only Padre. Should the All-Star Game be decided by guys whose teams aren't coming anywhere near the World Series without buying a ticket?

2007: Orlando Hudson, Freddy Sanchez, Brian McCann, Matt Holliday, Aaron Rowand
Rowand was actually the third-most valuable OF in the NL in 2007, but that says more about how generally weak center field was - Juan Pierre was in the top ten in center, for crying out loud. And of course Rowand managed to make outs in both the 8th and 9th of the 2007 game with the NL attempting to rally, the latter time, famously, with Albert Pujols languishing on the bench. Hudson and Sanchez are both okay middle infield bats but probably shouldn't be deciding a game of this magnitude. Holliday actually deserved his spot. McCann, fittingly, was in the midst of what has been the worst offensive season of his career so far.

2006: David Eckstein, Holliday, Sanchez, Ryan Howard, Carlos Lee
This one actually wasn't so bad, but the mere presence of David Eckstein - the twelfth-most valuable NL shortstop in 2006 - negates everyone else's contributions to baseball.

2005: Luis Castillo, Paul Lo Duca, Carlos Lee, Morgan Ensberg
Ensberg is basically a one-season wonder; this was that one season. Still, he was brought in at first base to replace Derrek Lee, not at his position of third base, which was occupied by token Red, the extremely mediocre Felipe Lopez (though Lopez actually got on base).

2004: Johnny Estrada, Moises Alou, Mark Loretta, Todd Helton, Jack Wilson, Jim Thome
Not as bad as it looks by the names, perhaps; Loretta was actually the top NL second baseman in VORP in 2004 and Wilson was second at SS, and someone has to play those positions. Still, not exactly Murderer's Row.

2003: Preston Wilson, Richie Sexson, Aaron Boone, Rafael Furcal, Castillo, Lo Duca
It's kind of interesting to see which guys manage to be scrubby bench All-Stars year after year, isn't it? Anyway, this is the one that really killed me - you've got a team with Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols on it, with Gary Sheffield, Todd Helton and Jim Edmonds, and Mike Lowell has doubled in his last plate appearance. And the guy you're summoning off the bench to pinch-hit for Lowell - the second-most valuable third baseman and 14th most valuable hitter in the NL in 2003 - is Aaron Boone. (This game remains epically ridiculous for the fact that Eric Gagne - who allowed 11 earned runs in all of 2003's real games and had an ERA+ of 335 [!!!!] - allowed three earned runs in the bottom of the eighth. I was ready to get all het up about the fact that Gagne was pitching the 8th and not the 9th until I looked it up and saw that John Smoltz - who allowed only eight earned runs in 2003 for an ERA+ of 383 [?!?!] - would presumably have been the go-to guy in the ninth. You're off the hook this time, Dusty.)

Some of this is just due to the NL talent deficit in recent years. But this year I really think the NL had a better team and yet they lost, in large part because that better team was fairly frontloaded and so didn't get a chance to play in the most meaningful part of the game. And again, okay, you can't really ask Pujols to play 15 innings in an exhibition game. But that's exactly the point. It's an exhibition game. You wouldn't see the Red Sox pulling Manny Ramirez in the sixth inning of a game to make sure they could get Brandon Moss into the game; they'd leave Ramirez out there because they wanted to win. And while the talent dropoff between Ramirez and Moss is obviously much larger than between Pujols and Gonzalez, for example, the point remains. You can't make the game count and still expect managers to get everyone in like it's Little League.

Am I a little bitter because the Cubs can't possibly have home field advantage in the World Series now? Maybe a little. But then they have to get there first, something of which I'm hardly completely confident, and anyway this means that when the Cubs sweep - which if the 2004 and 2005 schneid-breaking titles are anything to go by, they're destined to do - they'll win it at Wrigley. Anyway.

3. I'm looking forward to the second half.
Now that the exhibition that isn't is out of the way and we're ready for more real baseball, I'm hoping the Cubs can keep doing what they've been doing - which is to say, best record in baseball, best average, OBP and SLG in the league (and best OBP in baseball), pretty good pitching and timely hitting. With Soriano coming back soon and Harden hopefully staying healthy, this could be a really great second half, even with the schedule getting a bit tougher. Here's hoping for a few more road wins.