Not so classic after all?
On Sunday night, the lineups for the 2006 mid-summer classic were finally announced. Whether you care to watch the All-Star game or not, the fact remains that the starting lineups are nothing more than a battle of popularity and home attendance, with this year’s results being the greatest example of that problem in recent memory.

It’s not clear what the best voting system might be, but there’s got to be some changes to prevent things like this:

• Fan Offense #1: Not voting Joe Mauer as the starting catcher for the American League. ‘Pudge’ Rodriguez is a guy I respect — a hard-working veteran who’s had a great career — but he’s not the player he was five years ago and even if he was, he still wouldn’t be putting up the numbers Mauer is right now. The league leader in batting, and hottest player over the past month, should not sitting on the bench. Shame, shame.
• Fan Offense #2: Not voting Carlos Lee as an NL starter. While this situation isn’t as ludicious as the previous one, there’s still a strong argument to be made here. Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran are both having fantastic seasons, but their numbers aren’t quite as spectacular as Mr. Lee’s 25 home runs and 61 RBIs. I could get into which player is more important to their team’s offense, but I’ll leave it to the empirical for now.
• Fan Offense #3 Ozzie Guillen’s Offense: Not choosing Francisco Liriano as a pitcher for the AL team. Is there even an argument against a 9-1 record and 1.99 ERA? Luckily this situation can still be salavaged, as Liriano is up for the All-Star game’s Final Vote, a nifty little promotion that allows the fans to vote the final reserve for each team. Com’on kids, get over to MLB.com and make up for the Mauer situation.

And my suggestion for the All-Star voting system flaws? Since it’s too time-consuming, difficult, and offensive to qualify fans’ baseball intelligence, I would simply change the system to allow the fans to vote a starting line-up’s worth of players, but put the starting lineup decisions on the All-Star teams’ respective managers. I know, that doesn’t account for sanity of guys like Mr. Guillen, but it’s a start.

Posted by Eric — I’ll be back on Wednesday