Brian Roberts is the Orioles lone All-Star Representative and he deserves it too, he’s not one of those “well every team has to have a player, it might as well be him” picks. Lets look at the facts:
-his .327 batting average is second among AL second-baseman.
-he leads the AL in steals with 25.
-he leads the O’s in runs, triples and hits.
He’s more then deserving. I would have liked to see Jeremy Guthrie or Eric Bedard included on the team as well but the problem there is who would you have taken off to fit them in there? Here’s the list of the AL pitchers:
P Josh Beckett, BOS R/R
P Dan Haren, OAK R/R
P Bobby Jenks, CWS R/R
P John Lackey, LAA R/R
P Gil Meche, KC R/R
P Jon Papelbon, BOS R/R
P J.J. Putz, SEA R/R
P Francisco Rodriguez, LAA R/R
P C.C. Sabathia, CLE L/L
P Johan Santana, MIN L/L
P Justin Verlander, DET R/R
Who would you take off that list? I can’t really see anyone who stands out as being an obvious choice. Anyway congrats again to Brian on his second All-Star appearance (he started in 2005).
We were arguing about this over on our blog, eventually concluding that this is the deepest year of AL All-Star pitchers we’ve seen in a while. I don’t know who’s the weakest, outside of Meche, of the included starters. Lackey, maybe? (It’s like, which Mercedes convertible is your least favorite) That being said, Guthrie is putting up ridiculous numbers (at least the ones under his control) and about the only pitcher you can argue to be ahead of him, based on WHIP and starter ERA, is Haren.
And because baseball assigns value to the All-Star game outcome, you clearly want your league’s best pitchers on the team. As long as that’s the case, you need to have Guthrie on the team. No knock to the other All-Stars, but the man has been a top 2 starting pitcher.
I mentioned this on Camden Chat, but one of our bloggers argues this point better than I can…
http://weritegoode.blogspot.com/2007/07/great-mormons-in-sports.html