When I got home last night (I wasn't able to see the game), the first thing I did was check the pitching line to see whether Halladay got into the game - I'm glad he didn't. I was worried that the game would go 15 innings, and Doc would be forced to pitch the last six because Scioscia had run out of pitchers.

Which reminds me: can you imagine what would happen if Carlos Tosca got to manage an all-star game (which I hope will happen very soon :-))? He'd be in pitching-change heaven!

lol

i can see the druel running down his chin. oh sorry, is that too graphic

I was a supporter of this idea from the get go (there were discussions on Primer during the off-season where it was about 10-1 against the idea). My position was that anything that makes the All-Star game a more meaningful encounter is a good thing. In the run up to the game, nearly every TV broadcaster that I had the misfortune of listening to had an opinion on the new format and it was almost universally negative. Pat Tabler in particular contorted every which way to come up with bizarre reasoning for his viewpoint.

The next step is to drop the mandatory representative rule. The final step would be to convince the selectors that they should go with the players they really think are the best.

Mike Mussina, Pedro Martinez, Barry Zito and Mariano Rivera are all easily better pitchers than Eddie Guardado and Shiggy Hasegawa. I'm sure that, if pressed, nearly every player and coach in the American League would admit this, even though they somehow preferred the later two over the former four.

The A.L. almost lost the game in the 5th inning because they had a couple of "inferior" pitchers in there.

I thought that it would take a few years for the players to adjust before we saw their competitive fire, but I guess they proved all the naysayers (those who said they just wouldn't take it seriously even with more on the line) wrong on that score.

I still feel the same way; it's not the ideal format for deciding HF in the WS, but it's better than alternating years.

The benefit from this is that the AS game was actually played like I like to see it played. I don't think players tried harder this year, I just think that it wasn't a 'Little League, everyone has to play' game. They should have been doing that before this year.

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I can't figure out why everyone has been so down on the idea of giving homefield advantage to the winner of the All-Star game (other than the fact it came from Budzilla). I think it's a great idea. I don't see how any of the other recommendations (alternating years, best record (given the fact the teams play a different set of opponents), or what have you) is any less arbitrary than this. I sure think it made yesterday's game a lot more exciting.

Has anyone mentioned yet that home field advantage in the WS was decided by a Texas Ranger yet?

Mike

Total hijack here. My apologies.

From Lee Sinins' daily newsletter: According to reports from both Minnesota and Toronto, the Twins interest in BlueJays LF Shannon Stewart is heating up, with the BlueJays wanting OF Bobby Kielty.

I can't figure out why everyone has been so down on the idea of giving homefield advantage to the winner of the All-Star game (other than the fact it came from Budzilla).

One problem is the risk of injury, and the related conflict of interest faced by the All-Star manager. When the All-Star game was a glorified exhibition game, this wasn't a problem; presumably, the players weren't trying hard enough to hurt themselves. But can you imagine the controversy if a pitcher was to blow out his arm in the game, especially if the All-Star team was being managed by the pitcher's divisional rival?

Dave Till,

Some people think that injuries are more likely to occur when a player has a lapse in concentration. If so, then focusing more on the game may not lead to greater injury risk.

The pitchers are still going to be handled the same way - a maximum of 2 innings. And I think players retain the right to take themselves out of the game if they feel they are being abused.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/509/3989913.html
Click on my name to go to the Stewart/Kielty rumor in the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Looking at the Sun, Kielty has a really impressive OBP.

Has anyone mentioned yet that home field advantage in the WS was decided by a Texas Ranger yet?

Yes, I remember reading it somewhere. Maybe in one of those articles they post at Yahoo on the BBFL homepage.

I still don't know how I feel about the "this time it counts" crap, although you can't argue that it wasn't a good game. I think Scioscia did a great job managing the roster--aside from bringing Shigetoshi and Guardado in. (And, you know Selig had somebody holding a gun to Scioscia's son's head somewhere if he didn't bring Clemens in.) Mike rightly pulled Matsui pretty early, and most of his lineup moves made sure the best player for the situation was at the plate. I even like the way he gave Mulder two innings (I never understood why only the starter would traditionally pitch more than one inning).

Dusty, on the other hand, seemed to be managing according to the old rules, and consequently by the middle of the game had the likes of Gonzalez instead of Pujols, Preston Wilson instead of Sheffield, and Rondell White instead of Bonds.

Poor Dusty--you're really not that smart, are you?

Too bad Bret Boone didn't have a huge game and win the MVP. That would have been a sight to see him accepting the award from Selig.

I also had a laugh when Blalock mentioned ESPN instead of Fox in his post-game interview with Kennedy. It's just unfortunate that somebody in Blalock's family is going to have to die because of it.

I still feel best regular season record should determine home field advantage, and if Selig han't screwed up with interleague play the All-Star game wouldn't need fixing. Having a competitor like Scioscia helped more than anything else, I think.

In regards to injury concerns, has anyone ever been injured in an all-star game? My memory is filled with useless flotsam and jetsom, so I can't remember if someone has been hurt in my lifetime, which spans from the disco years through -- sigh -- both Bushes.

Robert, I think Guardado is a pretty good pitcher who just didn't pitch well last night. Shiggy, though, is clearly not all-star calibre. He looked completely overmatched out there, and, frankly, I can't believe he doesn't get hit harder than he has. He's damned lucky to pitch in Safeco. Then again, Eric Gagne looked VERY hittable last night, and I'm not about to make the argument he wasn't a worthy all-star.

Coach, I agree about Garret Anderson. So what if he never walks? He can roam my OF any time he wants.

Jurgen, I thought the very same thing about Boone! Bret was pretty on the mark, too, with his Selig comments, which makes me wonder what happened to the Boonie who had a 45 IQ/1.3 GPA in college. He sure could mash, though, and was a nice guy in his air-headed way.

Gitz:

Yeah, that would have been sweet. I guess Selig still has the chance to hand Boone either/all of the ALDS, ALCS, WS MVPs.

I read something funny about Boone at StrikeThree.com, discussing six "unsung" All-Stars . Here's what they say about Boone:

At age 27, Boone had just about his worst year ever. Since then he’s been on a steady march to greatness. If he keeps this up, he’ll be the best player that ever lived by the time he’s 42.

Maybe now the smartest, too.

It's official!

Stewart and PTBNL for Kielty

The Twins are fools... can Jones play RF?

At least they got a more useful player than Kenny did.

Well, it's official. The Jays have just traded Shannon Stewart to the Twins for OF Bobby Kielty. This is very interesting. I'm a big fan of Kielty actually. Perhaps Kielty becomes a free agent when Rios/Griffin are major league ready?

Ouch. Is my face red...

Huzzah to the double post. The interesting thing is that the Jays sent a PTBNL to the Twins instead of the other way around. Perhaps it was because of the financial considerations.

It's hard to evaluate the trade fully right now (who's the PTBNL, how much is Toronto sending to Minnesota, etc.) but Kielty will do similar things as Stewart at a fraction of the price. And he can throw the ball in from the OF!

Stewart
2003 - .294/.347/.449
2002 - .303/.371/.442

Kielty (DOB 8/5/76)
2003 - .252/.370/.420
2002 - .291/.405/.484

Aaron Gleeman was/is really high on Kielty. His reaction should be interesting.

There was an AB this year that Kielty had against the A's, I think it was against Zito, where he just owned the AB before hitting a 3 run HR to win the game. I was impressed.

Kielty had a stretch where he battled a pulled ribcage muscle and he couldn't throw. Not sure if that impacted his hitting, but the averages might indicate that.

It seems like a good trade, but would 2 first round picks next year be better than a productive OF in the majors today? Given the success rate of draft picks and the cost, maybe not.

Fox earned a 9.5/17 fast national Nielsen rating for last night's MLB All-Star Game from 8:45-11:15pm ET, even with the 9.5/17 final rating for last year's game from 8:45-11:30pm (THE DAILY).

LOL. Go Fox!

The always entertaining Joe Sheehan, from his All-Star diary over at BP:

Heck, once Clemens came in, would anyone have really been surprised to see Mike Piazza come off the bench to hit for Javy Lopez? Roster, schmoster. THIS TIME IT COUNTS!

"I also had a laugh when Blalock mentioned ESPN instead of Fox in his post-game interview with Kennedy. It's just unfortunate that somebody in Blalock's family is going to have to die because of it."

I hope they don't go after Jolene. She's a cutie.

While Garret Anderson kicked some serious ass this week, I still think he's one of those guys who were so underrated, they became overrated. My mind is drawing a blank as to another guy who went from one such extreme to the other (and covered so much ground in between. I thought he was extremely overrated for two or three years, but during the latter part of last season I got sick of hearing about him)

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My mind is drawing a blank as to another guy who went from one such extreme to the other (and covered so much ground in between. I thought he was extremely overrated for two or three years, but during the latter part of last season I got sick of hearing about him)

Joe Carter?

Actually Carter would make a good comp for Anderson.

Mike

That first 'overrated' inside my brackets was supposed to be "underrated". Once enough media types noticed him and declared him underrated his status soarred beyond that which he deserved.

I haven't been around long enough to know about the underrated side of Carter's career, but looking back I can definitely see the overrated side.

The problem with Anderson was, he was massively overrated for so long, that when he finally started performing well last year, he became underrated by a large number of fans who were so sick of hearing Anderson being overrated that they (we... I include myself) didn't realize how good he had become all of a sudden.

The baseball media, in their odd way of double-talking about players (treating them all the same) tend to call overrated players "underrated"... because they call all players who are obviously below-average "underrated" and a lot of obviously below-average players are overrated. It's some sort of affirmative action for bad players, I think... the media tend to treat all players as if they were all just as good as each other.

The media don't usually call players "overrated", but when they do, it's usually a very good player, a star. Star players, because they are so good, are often underrated.

The exception to this is with newly traded players or free agent signings. Free agent signings and newly acquired players by the hometown team are usually "underrated", while the guys on the way out are usually "overrated". (We are seeing this with Kielty/Stewart now)

So with a guy like Anderson, when he was a below-average outfielder all those years, he was an "underrated" player because you could tell so easily from his stats that he wasn't all that good.

The same held true, in spades, of Alex Gonzalez when he was in Toronto. I must have heard him described as "underrated" about 50,000,000 times during his last four or five years here, because you could tell just by watching him and looking at his numbers, that he wasn't a very good player.

Craig, are you saying Anderson is below average? I agree somewhat to the overrated charge, but Anderson is an above average player OF. Or maybe I'm just used to Terrence Long occupying an outfield spot on my favourite team ...

Duh. Perhaps I should read what you actually wrote before trying to clarify what you had said. Ah, so we agree on something! Anderson is an above-average player.

Gitz, I agree he's above-average now but he was below-average until last year.

The fact that the media is still calling Garret an "underrated" player has more to do with the fact that he used to be below-average. Players tend to keep their "underrated" tag for a year or two after they improve their play.

Another "underrated" guy you hear a lot about now is Jason Varitek, who was for many years a terrible defensive catcher who usually didn't hit much and was in consequence "underrated". Now that he's successful, he's kept the "underrated" tag. During the last Blue Jays series, John Cerutti couldn't shut up about what a terrific defensive player Varitek is and how underrated he was.