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February 14, 2013
In A Pickle
Not All Stars Are All-Stars
by Jason Wojciechowski
It's February, so perhaps it's not timely to write about the All-Star Game, but blame Sam Miller, who raised on Effectively Wild a few weeks ago the Sandy Alomar Conundrum: specifically, how did such a mediocre player manage to appear in six All-Star Games?
You know well that the selection of All-Star rosters is weird and fouled up in all sorts of ways. The popularity-contest aspect has been around as long as fan voting has, and even before that was the method du jour, you might still expect that fame played an important role because the Game had to sell tickets. Managers leaning toward their own players for reserve roles is an entirely understandable decision ("Coach, why'd you take Smith over me?") and yet one that doesn't necessarily result in the best possible roster. Starting pitchers are now routinely passed over if their spot in their real team's rotation interferes with their ability to pitch in the Game itself. Relief pitchers not named
Mariano Rivera populate the rosters in a weird homage to the idea of relievers as uniquely special and valuable players rather than simply failed starters. Good measures of total player value tend to be ignored come All-Star time in favor of raw offensive stats and good players sometimes get shafted because some random hamster had a great first half that he'll never ever repeat in his life.
On and on we could go, I'm sure, but that's not the point. The point is merely that it might be fun to think about which players were over- and under-appreciated in terms of All-Star selection due to the distortions of these processes. One way to examine this is by the ratio of a player's career
WARP to his career number of All-Star Game selections. Luckily, we have here at BP a highly trained team of database gurus who pulled that very thing for me. (Thanks specifically to the splendid Tim Collins and
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<< Previous Article
Rumor Roundup: Thursda... (02/14)
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<< Previous Column
In A Pickle: Four Sent... (01/31)
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Next Column >>
In A Pickle: All-Stars... (02/21)
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Painting the Black: Wh... (02/14)
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Sporer Report: The Fantasy Platoon Advantage...
Surprise Me!
Oh, the above list revealed something to me, the thinking fan: it revealed that I am old. I remember Bill Monbouquette quite well, and I remember his no-hitter. Curse you and this column for making me think about my age. (Seriously, nice stuff here.)
I heard him mentioned on the radio when he first came up, before I saw his name in the newspaper, so for me he will forever be "Bill Mambo Cat."
Right there with you, Bill. I'll toss out some more Sox pitchers from that era for you - Frank Sullivan, Tom Brewer, and, of course, Dick Radatz.