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A buddy and I sat down and crunched numbers and picked the REAL All-Star team.  Here are the rules.  Instead of 32 players, we limited our team to 30 per league.  We kept the notion of one player from each team, which made things hard in the AL but not in the NL.  And we remained loyal to the Fans' popular vote, meaning that we were picking only back-ups and pitchers.  Here is our team, followed by some notes concerning particular selections.

NL

C   Russell Martin, Bengie Molina
1B  Prince Fielder, Dmitri Young, Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard
2B  Chase Utley, Dan Uggla
SS  Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Edgar Renteria
3B  David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, Chipper Jones
OF   Barry Bonds, Matt Holliday
OF  Carlos Beltran, Carlos Lee
OF  Ken Griffey Jr., Eric Byrnes, Adam Dunn
SP  Jake Peavy
P   Chris Young, Brad Penny, Ian Snell, John Maine
RP  Jose Valverde, Takashi Saito, Francisco Cordero, Billy Wagner

AL

C   Pudge Rodriguez, Victor Martinez, John Buck
1B  David Ortiz, Carlos Peña, Justin Morneau
2B  Placido Polanco, David Roberts
SS  Derek Jeter, Carlos Guillen, Jhonny Peralta
3B  Alex Rodriguez, Mike Lowell
OF  Ichiro Suzuki, Grady Sizemore
OF  Gary Sheffield, Torii Hunter
OF  Magglio Ordoñez, Alex Rios, Curtis Granderson
SP  Dan Haren
P   J. Guthrie, J. Santana, C.C. Sabathia, J. Verlander, E. Bedard
RP  J.J. Putz, Eric Gagne, Pat Neshek

Notes

That's it.  Easy enough, even with a 30-man roster instead of the 32 currently employed.  Really the only wrangling arose in the AL when we had to put a Royal, a Blue Jay, and a Ranger on the roster.  Buck became the Royal because Meche did not stand up to the host of other AL starters.  We called on Gagne because Michael Young has been just OK this year and despite Sosa's 63 RBI he is not deserving as an AL outfielder.  Carlos Peña was our Devil Ray, Rios our Blue Jay.  The AL pen is odd-looking but the numbers of Putz, Gagne, and Neshek are very good.  It was hard leaving Youkilis and O. Cabrera off of the roster.  Simply put, Youkilis is a 1B/3B hybrid who loses out at both positions.  Orlando has great numbers but does not beat out Guillen or Peralta.  Our roster manages to get Byrnes and Young and H. Ramirez and Bedard and Guthrie into the lineup.  They are all deserving but did not find spots on the MLB roster.

The Bonds conspiracy and Young/Byrnes/Bedard/H. Ramirez snubs merited about one day on sports talk radio before the conversation settled once again on offseason NFL and NBA talk.  Our roster strives to show that the All-Star selection process is "whack" and that 30 roster spots is plenty.

// posted by J Rand @ 4:36 PM