Breaking Down the AL All-Star Voting Totals

1B: Prince Fielder leads Paul Konerko by about 250,000 votes. It's been somewhat of a down year for American League first baseman, and even in a down year by his standards power-wise, Prince leads the voting. Konerko is hitting over twenty points higher, but has eleven fewer RBIs. Both will make the squad anyway.

2B: The fact that Mitch Moreland is fourth is the 1B voting makes me believe Texas is stuffing the ballot box somewhat. Ian Kinsler is a fan favorite, but having a far less productive season than Robinson Cano, yet he leads, even if only by 15,000 votes. Cano is hitting .307/.371/.579/.950 while Kinsler is at .279/.340/.458/.798. You have to hand in to the Rangers' fan base for outvoting the Yankee supporters.

3B: Texas' offensive juggernaut is going to feature multiple all-stars. Adrian Beltre is hitting the lights out, playing stellar defense, and simply outperforming Miguel Cabrera. And it shows in the vote.

SS: Derek Jeter leads Elvis Andrus by well over a million votes. Only Josh Hamilton has more votes than the captain. Jeter's hit just .240 in June, but has already done enough to start yet another ASG.

C: Hitting just .242, Mike Napoli will get the starting nod. The NL has three catchers outhitting him, but being in the Rangers' lineup and 12 HR and 30 RBI are enough.

DH: David Ortiz leads Michael Young by half a million votes. He's hitting .309/.399/.628 with 21 home runs and leads the American League in OPS and runs scored, while ranking second in slugging percentage and total bases.Well deserved.

OF: Josh Hamilton has over five million votes. Curtis Granderson is a distant second, over two and a half million behind. Jose Bautista and Adam Jones are battling for the third and final starting spot. Following are a bunch of large market guys having completely average seasons, by any standards. Many of the better outfielders seem to be in the NL this season.

Top 25 Baseball Players (16-20)

16) Carlos Gonzalez, LF, Colorado Rockies

An MVP runner-up in 2010, Carlos Gonzalez pairs with Troy Tulowitzki as the core duo of the Rockies. While 2010 will likely be a career high in batting average (.336) for CarGo, he will likely remain a .300 hitter for the foreseeable future. Chalk him up for upwards of 25 bombs and 100 RBIs annually, coupled with 20 steals and solid defense, and you've got yourself an elite baseball player.


17) Josh Hamilton, LF, Texas Rangers

He's an extremely talented player, but I'm not much of a fan of Hamilton because of the way he threw third base coach Dave Anderson under the bus after his collision at home plate. Still, he's an excellent player, and I'm sure you've all heard his story by now. What's amazing is how his body is still holding up well, but the longevity of his career could still be put into question.


18) Curtis Granderson, CF, New York Yankees

While Grandy only hit .262 last season, boy did he produce (42 HR, 119 RBI, .552 SLG). He'll never be a tremendous hitter for average, but Kevin Long did a masterful job of restructuring his swing. Granderson plays one of the best center fields in the business: he gets tremendous reads on the ball, has above average speed, and a respectable arm for the position.


19) Prince Fielder, 1B, Detroit Tigers

Prince and Miguel Cabrera are going to be scary next to each other. And when Victor Martinez gets back, whenever that may be, well, the Detroit offense will be a force to be reckoned with. Fielder, now an absurdly rich man thanks to that new contract, simply needs to cut down on weight. Otherwise, at age 35, he won't be able to make it to first base anymore. He should work on fielding the position as well. As for his power? Death and taxes.


20) Jered Weaver, P, Los Angeles Angels

At the conclusion of July of last season, Jered Weaver's ERA sat at 1.88. August and September were a bit more of a challenge, but he still finished with a 2.41 mark and a 1.01 WHIP. It was a season that would have yielded a Cy Young in many previous years. This was a career year for the 29-year-old, but he has turned himself into an ace of spades.

Will be continued tomorrow. And yes, I promise there will be a catcher.

Against the Odds, Burnett Comes Through

I have to start off by gloating that somehow I saw this coming. Six innings pitched and two runs was what I projected for A.J. Burnett last night. I just had a gut feeling for some reason. Maybe it was partially because of his final regular season start against Boston; I do not know.

While it wasn't always pretty last night, A.J. pitched even better than my projection. He ended up surrendering only one run in five and two thirds innings en route to earning the win and keeping the Yankees' season alive. Sure, he needed Curtis Granderson to bail him out when he walked the bases loaded in the first. But what's wrong with a break going your way? When he left the game to the bullpen, his team had more runs than the opponent. He did what he needed to do.

Perhaps all he needed was confidence. Burnett constantly told reporters all season he believed he had what it took to be successful. Did he mean it? Only he knows. His self-confidence was probably wavering at best through his regular season struggles, in which he posted a miserable 5.15 ERA. Nonetheless, manager Joe Girardi kept putting him out there, much to the displeasure of the Yankee faithful.

And last night, well, his own teammates probably questioned whether their season was over before the game started. While everyone knows Burnett has the stuff to be successful, he just can't locate it. Extensive work with pitching coach Larry Rothschild helped fix his release and it proved successful, at least for yesterday's ballgame.

The only reason Burnett was on the hill for the Yanks was because of the Game 1 rain delay. He was expected to work out of the pen for the series in middle inning work. The rotation was supposed to be Sabathia, Nova, Garcia, Sabathia, Nova for the five-game series. Thanks to Mother Nature, A.J. Burnett got his chance, and he made the most of it.

What does this mean? Should the Yankees advance into the ALCS, we will see him on the hill, probably as the Game 2 starter. He is in the Yankees good graces after his performance last night, and he is as important as anyone for the Bombers if they want to make a championship run.

What is it that compels us to watch sports?

I am so devastated about what happened to the Eagles yesterday that I am in no position to write about the NFL Playoffs going on right now, so I'm going to try something different. It's one of those random things I've been thinking about for a little while, good enough that I'm not going to talk about the BCS Championship like a million other people, or how Nnamdi Asomugha is now a free agent, or how the Heat are winning every night like ESPN spends half of Sportscenter talking about every day, or how Rex Ryan won't shut up and coach, or how the Mountain West has two teams in the Men's Basketball top 10 (yes, it's true), or how Carmelo might be going to New Jersey, or how Marshawn Lynch can't be stopped, or how Michigan might have a new coach after three years of losing under RichRod, or how Kemba Walker continues to dominate college basketball. Nope, I'll pass up all of those topics to ponder this question, which relates to why we care at least a little bit about all of this stuff in the first place. What exactly is it in sports that makes us devote countless hours of our time staring at, or if our team is on, screaming at the TV, spend far too much money on merchandise, and buy ridiculously-priced tickets to, in many of our cases, make a commute to a stadium in a city full of traffic,  an overcrowded public venue, where, once you finally find your seat, there's probably gum or something sticky on it, as well as the guy behind you screaming obscenities before he drunkenly spills beer on you, on top of the fact that the temperature outside might just be subzero and your seat is behind a pole or something, all to watch a couple kajillionaires throw a ball around.

Love of the game for us fans? Yeah, that's certainly a factor. I could go on and on about that and bore you to death about that; for that is definitely a reason why, but any sports fan knows they love their favorite sport already. There's simply something else, something more, that triggers our brains to devote so much of our time to what is just a game.

You might never have even thought of sports this way before. It's an industry that has us hooked, an addiction in a sense. Why? Well, right now I'm going to try and figure that out, put on my Sherlock Holmes trench coat or whatever.

The people that hate their city's teams, well, the frontrunners in many cases, I'll never understand them. Yeah, yeah, your second cousin once removed lived in Dallas, so obviously you are entitled to be a Cowboys fan. Mmhm. Makes a boatload of sense. But for those loyal fans that love their city's team (and no, I'm not talking about the people who jump on the bandwagon once their team makes the championship), that watch them every time they're on, city pride is definitely a factor. I live in Philly. The fans here are known for getting tasered, drunkenly vomiting on cops and their families, and the such. Fans here boo the guys that are the reason our team became good in the first place. Many of them are complete fools. But the one thing everyone still has, much of the time to a far too great extent? Yup. Pride. When the Phillies win the World Series (as they will this year) we all get to go rub it in the face of the Mets fans who are privileged enough to now perennially watch their team suffer. When a team wins, a city wins, just as New Orleans demonstrated after their Super Bowl win last year (not gonna happen again, said the now 8-9 Seahawks.)

But wait a second. That still doesn't totally answer the question. The citizens of a city aren't the guys on the field, or court, etc. Nope. It's the athletes, many of them fresh out of the police station, or even jail, convicted dog-killers, or guys who've served time for manslaughter (not many), but the DUIs are countless, all this because they think they're on top of the world. The clueless ones, anyway, who think because they're a celebrity they can get away with that stuff. Why should a city cheer for them, millionaire criminals. Well, most of them aren't, for one. The good guys of sports vastly outnumber the bad (at least, that's how it appears), the Curtis Grandersons, Aubrey Huffs, and Jim Joyces of sports. Or is it all an act? Is that just to promote fans to regard them and their teams well? Do the players actually care about the fans, who are the reason they are so filthy rich in the first place? Is signing autographs and doing charity work and the such just for a good image for them, to make their lives easier?

For some athletes, that could be the case. But many of them, they realize they really are blessed to be in the position they are in, and do humanitarian acts out of kindness as they should. They're not fake. The other day I saw a documentary as part of ESPN's Year of the Quarterback, called Tim Tebow: Everything In Between. Now I know I'm getting a little off topic here, but when he went to that hospital to comfort a child who eventually would die, and text him for days after, I knew it was out of his heart, and not an act to promote his image, as, however unfortunately, some of the guys do.

My point from this is hard to understand, especially taking this question I posed originally into account, but it all links together. To put it all into simpler terms, I'm just further questioning our devotion to sports, wondering why we seem to bond, or at least strongly root for these athletes, even though most couldn't care less about each individual fan, like each of us care about them. Because in sports, they are the ones playing, not us. We don't win the Lombardi trophy, but as a fan, when our team wins, a speck of it goes to us.

It's Getting Ridiculous

As a Yankees fan, I will say this: It's starting to get ridiculous. The Yankees are targeting both Carl Crawford and Cliff Lee, the two most prized free agents this offseason, and will likely offer each of them lucrative contracts. It's getting out of hand. There's just too many insane free agent signings and contracts in New York. It's getting harder to be a fan, as the brass is, and I will say it, trying to buy a championship. People have said it for years, but now it really is coming true.

Imagine the Yankees with Crawford and Lee. It isn't unrealistic to say every man in their lineup could make the all-star team, if Gardy can break out and Jorge has some bat left in him. I mean I honestly don't know what I'd say, as a Yankees fan, when someone comes and tells me the Yanks try to buy championships, because it's a reality. Last year their payroll was roughly seven times that of the Pirates, who's $34,943,000 million was the lowest of the 30 teams. And here's something that might not surprise anyone, but is ridiculous nonetheless. Alex Rodriguez's salary last year was 33 million. What that means is the whole entire payroll of last year's Pittsburgh Pirates team was less than two million more than one player's salary.

And then there's Teixeira and Jeter and Sabathia and Granderson and Burnett and Cano and Rivera and Posada and Swisher.....all, either currently or at one point, all-star caliber players, all with huge salaries. Speedster Brett Gardner, at 452K last year, was the only value player in the lineup, the only guy getting paid below the league average. Shouldn't all these players be able to bring a 28th parade to the Bronx?

Sure. The Yankees need starting pitching. They have two solid starters heading into this year, if you count Phil Hughes who began to fall apart as the home stretch of the season rolled around, and wasn't any better in September. But you figure he's still a solid starter with great potential. Sabathia is in the Cy running annually. So that's two guys. Pettitte has most likely thrown his last pitch.

Then there's A.J. Burnett. Huge contract. Analysts talked about how overpaid he was the day he signed to play in pinstripes. He was said to be barely above average by some. But what none of the Yanks brass predicted was his season in 2010. 10-15 record, which, if you can believe it, was inflated by his solid offense, considering: 5.26 ERA, 1.51 WHIP. Yeah. That'll make Brian Cashman think twice about that move.

But it's all okay in the Bronx, because the Yanks can just pick up yet another superstar in Cliff Lee for some 7 years/150 mil. And since the above-average outfield isn't good enough, Crawford can be included in the budget as well.