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Rob Neyer
and David Schoenfield
of ESPN.com both do a better job of picking
through the All-Star selections than I could, so I’ll direct you to their
work for commentary on Cliff Floyd, et al.

My only note is to say that the omission of Greg Maddux is one of the
all-time bad jokes of the process, and a really good argument for ignoring
"All-Star appearances" when we get around to evaluating the
careers of late-20th- and early-21st-century players. Yes, I know Maddux
isn’t all that bothered, and even encouraged Bobby Valentine to take John
Burkett
. So what? Maddux deserved to be on the team as well, and if
Valentine hadn’t been so busy taking lots of undeserving relievers, maybe he
would have seen that.

OK, on to other matters. One of the hoary sayings in baseball is that if
you’re on first place on July 4, you’ll be there at the end of the year. Of
course, this dates from the days of eight-team leagues and train travel and
only first-place teams making the postseason. Nevertheless, Independence Day
is a marker along the season’s path, so let’s look at the standings with one
question: which division leaders will be there when the season is done?

AL East: There are essentially co-leaders here, as the Yankees hold a
half-game lead on the Red Sox. Of course, the Sox have played the entire
first half
without their best player, Nomar Garciaparra,
and have had other key members of the roster miss significant time.

Predicting whether this July 4 leader is going to make it to the finish line
in first place is complicated by the gaping unknowns the Red Sox face. If
they get Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez healthy, and the two players
play at their established level, they will win the division. If they don’t,
the Yankees will.

Yes, that’s a weasel analysis, but the health of the two players is the
determining factor in the race, and we just don’t know what Martinez and
Garciaparra will contribute down the stretch. The two players combined are
worth around seven wins over the course of a half-season, and no
trade-deadline pickups are going to have that kind of impact.

Gun at my head, I think the Sox will get enough from their two wounded
soldiers to win the division, leaving the Yankees to battle the AL Central
runner-up for the wild card.

AL Central: The Twins hold a three-game lead over the Indians, which,
it’s fair to say, is not a sentence I expected to be typing in the year
2001.

The Twins aren’t just a neat story anymore; they’re a contender, and they
need to be evaluated as such. They have an average offense with far too many
OBP sinks, a situation that will be helped in part by
the return of David
Ortiz
this month. They have a good rotation and a deep bullpen, although
the strikeout rates of their top three starters are cause for concern.

The advantage the Twins have is that their biggest need is for a bat to
stick in left field, and that kind of player is easier to acquire than a top
starting pitcher or an up-the-middle solution. If they can get Ortiz back
and dip into their revenue-sharing money for a Greg Vaughn, they
would improve their offense tremendously.

The Indians have the opposite problem. Their offense is the second-best in
the league, but their rotation hasn’t given them anything, especially over
the last month. With a deep and talented bullpen, all the Tribe really needs
is a rotation that avoids losing a game in the first five innings. The
Indians only need Chuck Finley and Dave Burba to even approach
their 2000 performances to put the Twins away.

This doesn’t look good for the July 4 believers. The Indians have the talent
on hand to beat the Twins, and I just can’t see Minnesota playing .600 ball
for another half. I’d love to be wrong, but I think the Tribe gets their
last hurrah.

AL West: Um…yeah.

NL East: As I mentioned Monday,
the Phillies have done a great job of
bouncing back from a down stretch, winning six of seven and forcing their
way back to first place. I still think they’re a year early, and while the
2002-2005 period should yield a few division titles, this team is going to
come up a little short.

Like the Red Sox, the Braves have been playing short-handed for most of the
first half,
down two starting pitchers in John Smoltz
and Kevin Millwood.
They’ve also suffered self-inflicted wounds at first base and
both outfield corners, and shuffled through more bad relievers than my old
Strat teams.
The Steve Karsay/Steve Reed trade
was the first move to address the problems, and I think we’ll see more.

Despite everything going wrong for them for three months, the Braves look
like the most likely candidate to win the NL East. July 4 loses another one.

NL Central: Like the Twins, the Cubs have ceased to be a story and
started being a real threat. Unlike the Twins, they don’t have to hold off a
particularly strong team, just three flawed ones, and that’s going to make
all the difference. The Cubs, with their Strikeouts ‘n’ Sammy team, will
hold on and win the NL Central.

NL West: This division is really weird, in that other than the
Diamondbacks at the top, the teams aren’t lining up anywhere close to their
runs scored/runs allowed. The D’backs have been the best team here by any
measure, thanks to a great bench and good work from the replacement starters
they’ve plugged in behind Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

Since they seem committed to Craig Counsell in the leadoff spot, and
none of the other four teams in the West is all that impressive, they should
be able to hold on and win the division.

So the "July 4" standard looks good in three divisions, less
likely to hold in two, and is an unknown in the AL East.

Joe Sheehan is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by
clicking here.

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