Luol Deng Makes His First All Star Game

Luol Deng was drafted by the Chicagio Bulls with the 7th overall pick in the 2004 draft. If you have been following my post's for a while you know for the longest time I was down on Luol Deng because he never lived up to his potential. He was always good, but never great and lived up to all the athleticism that Bulls fans thought he could. This was early on in his career when he was trying to develop into the type of player he wanted to be. Now, he has found the right style to his game being a slasher, jump shooter, and even adding the three pointer to his game. The movement he means to an offense you can only understand by watching Bulls games. 


His defense can also not be underrated. He can guard so many 2's or 3's and keep with the top shooter's in the game. Now under his second year under Tom Thibodeau he has really come into his own. With all the nagging injuries that he experienced early on in his career behind him, the mentorship of a good coach has had a endless impact on Deng (and Rose for that matter).

Deng is putting up pretty similar numbers compared to the last few years, but he finally got recognized by the other coach's in the league for his effort and all the little things he does that impact a game. Deng is the glue of the Bulls and deserves to be an All Star!

Who Deserves To Be An All-Star: 2011 MLB, Part III

You can view Part I, Starting Lineup Edition here
You can view Part II, Pitchers Edition here

Reserves Edition

The first part of this post is who I believe deserves to be an All-Star, independent of team. The second portion will be who I will have to replace because of the archaic notion that every team HAS to be represented in the All-Star game. No other sport has this silly rule and chances are if you are a team like the Baltimore Orioles who are so bad, chances are you do not have an All-Star on your team- that is why your team is doing so bad.

I also believe actually playing the game out is an antiquated notion because we have guys like Omar Infante in 2010 become an All-Star for the main reason that he can play multiple positions defensively and not because he actually deserved to be an All-Star.

AL

C- Carlos Santana (CLE)
1B- Mark Teixeira (NYY)
1B- Miguel Cabrera (DET)
1B- Paul Konerko (CWS)
2B- Ben Zobrist (TAM)
SS- Asdrubal Cabrera (CLE)
3B- Adrian Beltre (TEX)
OF- Jacoby Ellsbury (BOS)
OF- Carlos Quentin (CWS)
OF- Matt Joyce (TAM)
OF- Brett Gardner (NYY)

NL

C- Miguel Montero (ARI)
1B- Prince Fielder (MIL)
1B- Gaby Sanchez (FLO)
2B- Danny Espinosa (WAS)
2B- Brandon Phillips (CIN)
SS- Troy Tulowitzki (COL)
3B- Aramis Ramirez (CHC)
OF- Shane Victorino (PHI)
OF- Michael Bourne (HOU)
OF- Carlos Beltran (NYM)
OF- Jay Bruce (CIN)
DH/1B/OF- Lance Berkman (STL)

Unrepresented AL Teams:
- Minnesota Twins
- Baltimore Orioles
- Oakland Athletics

- Replace SP Scott Baker (MIN) with RP Sergio Santos (CWS)
- Replace C Matt Wieters (BAL) with C Carlos Santana (CLE)
- Replace SP Gio Gonzalez (OAK) with SP Josh Beckett (BOS)

Unrepresented NL Teams:
None.

Who Deserves To Be An All-Star: 2011 MLB, Part II

You can view Part I, Starting Lineup Edition here

Pitchers Edition

AL

Starter- Jered Weaver (LAA)
SP- Justin Verlander (DET)
SP- C.C. Sabathia (NYY)
RP- Jonathan Papelbon (BOS)
RP- Mariano Rivera (NYY)
RP- Sergio Santos (CWS)
SP- Felix Hernandez (SEA)
SP- C.J. Wilson (TEX)
SP- David Price (TAM)
SP- James Shields (TAM)
SP- Dan Haren (LAA)
SP- Josh Beckett (BOS)

NOTE: I would have no problem replacing Santos with David Robertson (NYY) who leads all AL RP in WAR and K/9 but, what can I say, I'm still old school and believe saves count for more than "regular ol'" middle relief.

NL

Starter- Roy Halladay (PHI)
SP- Cliff Lee (PHI)
SP- Cole Hamels (PHI)
RP- Craig Kimbrel (ATL)
RP- Johnny Venters (ATL)
RP- Carlos Marmol (CHI)
RP- John Axford (MIL)
SP- Clayton Kershaw (LAD)
SP- Tim Lincecum (SFG)
SP- Jordan Zimmerman (WAS)
SP- Anibal Sanchez (FLO)
SP- Tommy Hanson (ATL)
SP- Jair Jurrjens (ATL)

Who Deserves To Be An All-Star: 2011 MLB, Part I

This post is dedicated to who I think should the starters for both the AL and NL.

But before I begin, I would just like to go off an a quick rant about my boy Paul Konerko. Currently he has a triple slash line of .319/.390/.569 good for a .959 OPS and a .407 wOBA and a 2.3 WAR. He has the 3rd best wOBA among AL first basemen, the second best ISO among AL first basemen and the second most home runs among first basemen. I understand AL first base is deep with A-Gon, Miggy, and Tex doing amazing, but leaving Paulie off is just ridiculous. I would personally take Paulie over David Ortiz and especially Josh Hamilton. I would even take Paulie over the lone White Sox representative- Carlos Quentin.

Also, fuck Derek Jeter. He fucking blows this year and is done. Let him get six more hits and then let him retire.

Here are the AL starters:

C- Alex Avila (DET)
1B- Adrian Gonzalez (BOS)
2B- Dustin Pedroia (BOS)
SS- Jhonny Peralta (DET)
3B- Alex Rodriguez (NYY)
RF- Jose Bautista (TOR)
CF- Curtis Granderson (NYY)
LF- Alex Gordon (KAN)
DH- David Ortiz (BOS)

The voters really didn't do a half bad job this year. Sure Jeter blows and Josh Hamilton only has five hme runs and has missed half the season, but kudos to the voters for getting Bautista and Avila correct.

NL Starters

C- Brian McCann (ATL)
1B- Joey Votto (CIN)
2B- Rickie Weeks (MIL)
SS- Jose Reyes (NYM)
3B- Chase Headley (SDP)
RF- Justin Upton (ARI)
CF- Andrew McCutchen (PIT)
LF- Ryan Braun (MIL)
DH- Matt Kemp (LAD)

I give the edge to Votto over Fielder because Votto's a much better defender and has a better WAR. Headley leads all NL 3B in wOBA and WAR but overall an extremely weak NL 3B class.

Coming Up Next: AL and NL Pitchers

Who Deserves To Be An All-Star: 2010 MLB, Part Deux

I'm too tired/lazy/incompetent/apathetic to write analysis and gripes, but here's who deserved to be an All-Star reserves based upon WAR, wOBA, and FIP/xFIP.

The AL Team*

C- Mike Napoli (LAA), Victor Martinez (BOS)
1B- Miguel Cabrera (DET), Paul Konerko (CWS)
2B- Dustin Pedroia (BOS), Ian Kinsler (TEX)
SS- Derek Jeter (NYY)
3B- Evan Longoria (TAM), Alex Rodriguez (NYY)
OF- Ichiro Suzuki (SEA)
OF- Torii Hunter (LAA)
OF- Shin Soo Choo (CLE)
DH/Off- Kevin Youkilis (BOS)

SP- Cliff Lee (SEA), Jon Lester (BOS), Jered Weaver (LAA), Felix Hernandez (SEA), Ricky Romero (TOR), Zach Grienke (KAN), Justin Verlander (DET), Clay Buchholz (BOS)

RP- Matt Thorton (CWS), Mariano Rivera (NYY), Neftali Feliz (TEX), J.J. Putz (CWS), Frank Fransisco (TEX), Darren Oliver (TEX)
As you may have noticed, fuck guys just because they get the last three outs in a certain situation

Guys who get screwed because "every team needs an All-Star":
- Gio Gonzalez (OAK) screws over Clay Buchholz (BOS)
- Ty Wigginton (BAL) can replace the injured Dustin Pedroia (BOS)

The NL Team*

C- Miguel Olivo (COL)
1B- Adrian Gonzalez (SD)
2B- Brandon Phillips (CIN)
3B- Scott Rolen (CIN), Z-Pack (WAS)
SS- Jose Reyes (NYM)
OF- Matt Holiday (STL)
OF- Aubrey Huff (SFG)
OF- Marlon Byrd (CHC)
OF- Alfonso Soriano (CHC)
OF- Colby Rasmus (STL)
OF- Andrew McCutchen (PIT)

SP- Roy Halladay (PHI), Yovani Gallardo (MIL), Ubaldo Jiminez (COL), Adam Wainwright (STL), Tim Lincecum (SFG), Clayton Kershaw (LAD), Roy Oswalt (HOU)

RP- Jonathan Broxton (LAD), Carlos Marmol (CHC), Heath Bell (SD), Brian Wilson (SFG), Luke Greggerson (SD)
Still against guys "just because they close" but NL's dominant relievers just happen to be, for the most part, closers

Guys who gets screwed because "every team needs an All-Star":
- Chris Young (ARI) screws over Colby Rasmus (STL)

*roster positions for this post are based upon what positions the All Star managers actually choose

Who Deserves To Be An All-Star: 2010 MLB, Part I

Some quick notes before I tell you how MLB writers, players, managers and fans are, excuse my French, fucking retarded

- I am a firm believer that, like voting, you should have to take a test in order to vote for the All-Star game. And if you use the metrics RBI, Runs, Batting Average, or Wins to determine how you voted, you're automatically disqualified from voting. I don't care if you played baseball before or if you are currently playing- that doesn't mean you're smart enough to decide who's the best in your sport.
- This year, especially more than recent years, non-closer relievers were chosen. Guys like Matt Thorton, Arthur Rhodes, and Evan Meek were chosen as opposed to the teams respected closers. And that's a good thing. Ideally, the best bullpen pitcher on your team is NOT your closer, so that when your team is in a jam, your best reliever can come into the game and get your team out of the jam. It's nice to see these guys get more and more love as opposed to closers just because they get "saves".
- HOW THE FUCK IS ALEX RIOS NOT AN ALL-STAR!? Yes, I am a White Sox fan so of course I'm going to show love for my team, and there are others that got screwed this year, but this selection is just unjustifiable. Rios is 4th among AL OF in wOBA, 3rd among AL OF in WAR, 7th among AL OF in UZR/150, and 3rd among AL OF in OPS. He steals bases, hits home runs, has a batting average over .300 (all of which "baseball guys" like) and is by far the White Sox best player this year.
- I think Paul Konerko should be all All-Star too, but I'm not as worked up about it as I am about Rios. I think Morneau and Cabrera are better than Konerko, but he's light years ahead of David fucking Ortiz- who did get selected to the All-Star game. Konerko is t-2nd in the AL in home runs, 6th in the AL in OPS, 6th in the AL in wOBA, and 5th among AL 1B in WAR. By the way, Konerko is better than Big Papi in all those categories as well as: RBI, BA, OBP, and SLG. The one category David Ortiz does beat Konerko in: years of taking steroids.
- Stephen Strausburg does NOT, you hear me, NOT, deserve to be an All-Star this year. As awesome as he's been, like Manny last year, there are just as good of players out there that have performed just as well- but in many more games. They have been more valuable to their team than Strasburg has been in his six starts.
- Not every team deserves an All-Star. No other sports has this bullshit. If you're the Pittsburgh Pirates or Baltimore Orioles, you have a bad record for a reason, you're roster is full of shitty players. One of these shitty players does not necessarily mean they are good- especially to take away a valuable spot from a deserving All-Star. Ty Wiggington is an All-Star!? Really!?

Now onto to who actually deserves to start in the All-Star game

The AL Team
C- Joe Mauer (MIN)
1B- Justin Morneau (MIN)
2B- Robinson Cano (NYY)
3B- Adrian Beltre (BOS)
SS- Alex Gonzalez (TOR)
OF- Josh Hamilton (TEX)
OF- Alex Rios (CWS)
OF- Carl Crawford (TAM)
DH- Vladimir Guerrero (TEX)
SP- Fransisco Liriano (MIN)
- This pick actually shocked me too, but Liriano leads the AL in FIP and xFIP and his 3rd in the AL in K/9. All better than Cliff Lee and Jon Lester.

The NL Team
C- Brian McCann (ATL)
1B- Joey Votto (CIN)
2B- Chase Utley (PHI) inj
- 2B- Martin Prado (ATL)
3B- David Wright (NYM)
SS- Troy Tulowitzki (COL) inj
- SS- Hanley Ramirez (FLA)
OF- Josh Willingham (WAS)
OF- Corey Hart (MIL)
OF- Andre Ethier (LAD)
DH- Albert Pujols (STL)
SP- Josh Johnson (FLA)
- This was a hard one because you could also make a great case for Roy Halladay and Yovani Gallardo. Surprisingly, all three are better than Ubaldo Jiminez.

Next post, who deserves to be the back ups

Pro Bowl Selections Get Slighty Evened Out

Like every year for the Pro Bowl, players selected get "injured" and new, deserving players get to go to the Pro Bowl and still have on their resume.

1) Frank Gore replaces Steven Jackson. While I think Jackson should have been the starter, Gore absolutely should have been the first alternate (over AD) and deserved a spot over DeAngelo Williams. It's a great thing Gore gets to go to the Pro Bowl this year

2) Matt Schaub replaces Tom Brady. Schaub was the 4th best QB in the AFC this year so I didn't think he deserved to necessarily represent the AFC. But he probably was a top 5 QB this year and deserved to be rewarded for the great season he had.

3) Steve Smith (NYG) replaces Larry Fitzgerald. I personally think Marques Colston deserved to go if an NFC wide out didn't go, but you can make a damn fine argument for Smith and he still had a very good year

4) Vince Young replaces Phillip Rivers. Once Peyton Manning wins the AFC Championship Game, all three selected AFC QBs will not go to the Pro Bowl, so was Young the 5th or 6th best AFC QB this year? I don't know because it's hard to measure Vince Young. But I still would have selected Ben Roethlisberger (ugh this pains me to say that) over Young.

5) Chad Ochocinco replaces Wes Welker. Randy Moss gets screwed again. Moss, Vincent Jackson, and Santonio Holmes all had better years than Ochocinco.

There have been some other replacements like Clay Matthews over Lance Briggs and Jonathan Goodwin replaced Andre Gurode, but who really cares about "non-skilled" players, right?

How To Fix All-Star Selections

There are major flaws with All-Star selections in any major sport and how the games itself are played. I'm here to help you baby birds and I'm going to fix the system.

Most major sports select their All-Stars midway through the season. This becomes a huge problem because who really deserves to be an All-Star, the best of the best, should be determined by the sample size of an entire season. By not deciding All-Stars at the end of a season, we, as sports fans and sports leagues, are only giving honors and rewarding players for only playing part of a season. Yet players still play after an All-Star selection, players still put up stats after a selection, and players still (for the most part) put in effort to continue to win games. Everything that athletes do after an All-Star selection essentially becomes meaningless and void. Think about this, Jermaine Dye was an All-Star snub last season and Brad Hawpe was an All-Star. When you look at these players numbers at the time of All-Star voting, these players rightfully deserved to go. But each of these players had awful second halves. Worse than getting Paris Hilton's sloppy 5,212th bad. After a season, we judge how a player is doing after his entire body of work. If a player has been inconsistent (i.e. a guy like Pat Burrell), he gets criticized for it. But that's not how it's done with All-Star voting. Because we don't know how a players' entire season gets played out, we are rewarding players for being good for a period of time. But if that same players becomes inconsistent, he receives less of a punishment because he already has his All-Star selection.

This is also an argument about fairness. A guy with a great first half and shitty second half doesn't get the same treatment as a guy with an awful first half but a phenomenal second half. Even if you don't want to classify something as "fair" or not, there's just something inside of you that you know is wrong to select All-Stars before the season is over. Think about it. When you vote for MVPs, you vote for them at the end of the year. In other sports like football, Pro Bowl alternates are chosen based upon their entire season of work (because the season is over when these players are chosen). When you look back upon an athletes year they had, you look at their entire year- not just part of it.

So now that we've decided that All-Stars should be chosen after a season is over, we must now determine who gets to choose who becomes an All-Star. Number one plan implemented is that ordinary fans are not allowed to vote on players. Ordinary fans are dumb and do not know how to truly measure how good a player is. This year the aging and crappy A.I. was voted an All-Star based upon what he has done throughout his career. Alfonsio Soriano and Manny Rameriz got an unnecessary and high amount of votes for last years MLB All-Star. Now I'm not suggesting that everyone has to be as "smart" or in depth as a guy like DME is with baseball to be allowed to vote, but if fans are to have the power to vote, then there needs to be a screening process first.

I'm all for having players and managers/coaches have a huge input. Sure, occasionally you get what happened in 2008 where the players voted the awful Jason Varitek as the 3rd AL catcher over A.J. Pierzynski because everyone hates AJ and Varitek is well respected. But as whole, these people see and evaluate others in the league and truly know the worth of each players. I'm also not against having columnists and well known and respected analysts vote on All-Stars like they tend to do for MVP and Hall of Fame voting, but again a screening process needs to be utilized. We don't need any Steve Phillips voting on All-Stars based upon what he "sees with his eyes" (in fact, any analysts who solely basis his decision upon a players worth but his eyesight alone is not only not allowed to vote on All-Stars but is also banished from the sport). This system establishes that the "true" All-Stars get chosen.

Now let me pause her for a second and tell you why chosing All-Stars this way is important. The biggest argument I've heard is that "All-Star games are the fans game. This is a game just for the fans and the fans should be able to choose what they want to see." This reasoning is flawed in two respects. The first, is that the fans absolutely don't give a shit about the games itself. The NFL moved the Pro Bowl from a week after the Superbowl to the week before because nobody watched nor cared about it. Sure people watch the MLB All-Star game, but that's just because "it means something" and most fans will tell you that choosing home field advantage via the All Star game is a dumb idea. Fans do not care inherently about the games themselves; they just don't.

Secondly, and more importantly, All-Star selections help determine Hall of Fame voting. Of course All Star selections are not the end all be all, they still are a major factor that HOF voters look at when determining who belongs as the best of the best. A sport like baseball is starting to, and can, trend away from that because statistics are a FANTASTIC way to judge individual talent. But stats are harder for a sport like football. Stats are not necessarily the best way to judge say about how is the best offensive tackles of all time, or safeties. In this instance, All-Star selections are a great way, like The Hidden Game of Football suggests, to determine HOFers. This is also another reason to why AS selections should be after an entire season and not in the middle.

Lastly, the games themselves. As mentioned earlier, nobody gives a crap about them. Sure SOME people would throw a stink of there never was an All-Star game again, but I think a side poll GOI had (of course not in the least scientific nor am I claiming it is) showing people didn't care about the Pro Bowl, is indicative of fans view All Star games in general. The game itself is worthless to people, it's the athletes that have been selected that people care about.

So the final solution? First, have AS selections done after a season has ended. Next, have a screening process so only those who really know how to evaluate athletes are allowed to have an input in AS selections. Lastly, just have a list (analogous to what college basketball does with it's First All American teams or Silver Sluggers) of who is an All Star; there is no need to play a meaningless game.

Boom. Done. I've fixed everything. Sure, some people (like say league commissioners who will lose a shit ton of money and revenue that All Star games bring to their sports), but screw those guys. This is for the greater good.