How Many Mistakes Are There in this Year's MLB All-Star Rosters?

Issue #6

UPDATE 7/18: Six additional players have been selected, 3 in the AL and 2 in the NL:

• Relievers Liam Hendricks of the White Sox and Jordan Romano of the Blue Jays are replacing Gerrit Cole of the Yankees and Justin Verlander of the Astros. Both are good selections in my view.

• 1B Ty France of the Mariners is taking OF Mike Trout of the Angels’ spot on the roster, with Byron Buxton of the Twins getting the starting nod in CF. Again, I had Ty France on my near-miss list below, so I’m glad to see him make his first All-Star team.

• 1B Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers is joining the NL roster as OF Starling Marte of the Mets will not be playing. And two pitchers, SP Miles Mikolas of the Cardinals and RP Devin Williams of the Brewers are replacing SP Max Fried of the Braves and SP Corbin Burners of the Brewers. Again, all three appeared on my near-misses depth chart below, so I like these picks.

UPDATE 7/16: Four additional players have been selected, starting with the very deserving 3B Austin Riley of the Braves as a replacement for Nolan Arenado in the NL. Also in the NL, SP Tyler Anderson of the Dodgers is replacing Carlos Rodon of the Giants, himself also a late addition as noted below. And at 2B, in the NL we have Jake Cronenworth of the Padres replacing Jazz Chisholm (Jeff McNeil will now be the starter), and in the AL we have 2B Santiago Espinal of the Blue Jays replacing Jose Altuve of the Astros. I’m very glad Riley has made it, and Anderson is a fine choice given the need for an additional NL starting pitcher. I hadn’t included Cronenworth or Espinal in my near-misses charts below, and neither are putting up big numbers this year—but 2B is not a really deep position so far either.

UPDATE 7/12: Since this article was first written, there have been three additional all-stars named as injury or paternity leave replacements. Boston’s J.D. Martinez joins the AL squad as a DH, and Miami’s 1B/DH Garrett Cooper and San Francisco’s SP Carlos Rodon join the NL squad. I think Martinez is a fine selection, and definitely Rodon. I am baffled by the choice of Cooper, who is having a pretty good year but that I didn’t even include in my pretty lengthy selection of all-star near misses below. I would absolutely have chosen 3B Austin Riley (ATL), 1B Josh Bell (WSN), or 2B/SS Tommy Edman over Cooper (who is replacing Harper at DH apparently, but that is a position that affords anyone as a replacement really.)

The 2022 All-Star pitchers and reserves have now been named, and as always there are more deserving players than roster spots. I'd say this year that feels particularly true for pitchers, as there is no shortage of both starters and relievers where you can make a good case in favor.

But that said, I'm not sure I can really argue all that strongly that there were any obvious mistakes—so-called “snubs”—in the selecting of this year's AL and NL All-Stars. I'm 48 years old, and I've been analyzing the all-star selections since I was 7 or 8 years old. Over the past 40 years, I can't remember not thinking there was at least one, sometimes many, definite mistakes in who was chosen—either by the fans for the starters, or by the managers, players, or MLB for the pitchers and reserves.

But this year's squads are I think very solid. There, I said it.

Before we dive into this fun perennial analysis, a few process reminders:

• Every team must have at least one representative. This always makes for a few selections that wouldn't have otherwise made it based on the numbers, but you have to factor this rule into considerations of potential “snubs”.

• The starters were chosen by fan vote, the reserves and pitchers are a mix selected by the players and by MLB.

• Two legends of the game were given spots, one on each roster: Albert Pujols of the Cardinals and Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers. I posted about this recently: “Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera: Their Hardest and Easiest Pitching Opponents.”

• The All-Star game itself is the 92nd in MLB history, and will take place on July 19, at Dodgers Stadium. So there are still some games to be played, and potentially some injuries that could arise leading to alternates being chosen (e.g., William Contreras of the Braves has already been chosen to replace the injured Bryce Harper of the Phillies as the NL DH).

American League

Looking first to the AL All-Stars, with the starters chosen by the fans in bold:

The fan vote for OF doesn't distinguish between LF/CF/RF. The above is one way they might play, but another would be Trout in LF, Judge in CF, and Stanton in RF.

Yordan Alvarez is now out with an injury, so watch for a replacement to be named for him, though it might not be a DH of course.

Not surprisingly, the dominant Yankees have the most players with six. The Astros come in strong with five, as do the Blue Jays with four.

There were seven AL teams that had only one player each (unless you count the Tigers, which have Gregory Soto and the special selection of Miguel Cabrera). The fans chose SS Tim Anderson, the lone representative of the White Sox. Starting pitcher Shane McClanahan was an obvious choice for the Rays. And the players took care of Baltimore by choosing closer Jorge Lopez. But then MLB needed to make choices for these four teams:

• Oakland A's - They went with Paul Blackburn over Frankie Montas. Montas has a lower ERA, lower WHIP, and more strikeouts, but his hard-luck 3-9 record doesn't look good compared with Blackburn's 6-4.

• Kansas City Royals - They went with leftfielder Andrew Benintendi, which is fine though a case could also be made for SS Bobby Witt Jr or reliever Scott Barlow.

• Texas Rangers - They went with starting pitcher Martín Pérez, which is a fine choice especially given the way the players’ selections fleshed out the rest of the roster (otherwise CF Adolis Garcia, C Jonah Heim, and even RP Brock Burke could have been candidates too).

• Seattle Mariners - The obvious choice was CF Julio Rodriguez (the only rookie selected in either league), though I assume SP Logan Gilbert and 1B Ty France were also considered.

Here are players who I'd say are close to being All-Stars this year, and therefore might be options should injuries arise in the next week (in alphabetical order per position):

As noted earlier, there is an abundance of pitchers with really good numbers this year, both starters and arguably even more so for relievers.

But are any of the above players really "snubs"? None really jump out at me. Taylor Ward was hot early in the season, but then cooled off more recently. I'm not sure Jose Trevino is an obviously better choice as backup catcher than Jonah Heim, and again, you could make a case that Witt might be more deserving than Benintendi as the lone Royals representative.

For what its worth, Astros rookie SS Jeremy Pena is currently 12th in WAR for all position players in baseball.

National League

Now turning to the National League, here are the All-Stars, again with the starters chosen by the fans in bold:

As with the American League, the fan vote doesn't distinguish LF/CF/RF, so I'm not sure who will start in CF as both Acuna and Betts are playing more RF these days.

Overall, I think the fans did a fine job in picking the starting position players. You could make a case for Arenado over Machado, Swanson over Turner, Schwarber over Pederson—but all of these guys at least made it as reserves.

Since Harper is out with with an injury, William Contreras of the Braves, the runner-up for the NL's DH spot, has already been added. That selection could be debated, as he's only played 43 games with 162 plate appearances (not enough to qualify for the leaderboards of any rate statistics). But he has done well during that time, hitting 11 HR with a .273/.358/.566 slash line and an impressive 151 OPS+. And he splits his time between DH and catcher, giving the NL squad an additional gloveman behind home plate if needed.

And of course one of the feel-good stories of this All-Star game is regarding William and his older and more accomplished brother, Willson Contreras, catcher for the Cubs. They will be the first brothers to appear in an All-Star Game since Aaron and Bret Boone in 2003, the first brothers on the same team since Robert and Sandy Alomar in 1998, and the first brothers to start on the same team since the Alomars in 1992.

The World Series champion Braves lead the way here with five All-Stars, followed by the Cardinals, Dodgers, and Mets with four each.

There were six teams with only one representative, starting with the San Francisco Giants, where the fans chose OF Joc Pederson. You could make a case for SP Carlos Rodón or even Logan Webb, but it would be hard to deny any of the pitchers who were chosen.

MLB then had to step in and make sure five other teams were represented:

• Washington Nationals - Juan Soto is batting a very un-Soto-like .243, but he has 16 doubles, 17 HR, and is still walking a ton, leading to a .398 OBP and 153 OPS+.

• Cincinnati Reds - Luis Castillo was the obvious choice, and is perhaps just as obviously not going to remain with the Reds much longer.

• Pittsburgh Pirates - They have some good young talent, but none are all-stars yet, so it made sense to go with their closer, David Bednar.

• Colorado Rockies - 1B C.J. Cron was a good choice, with reliever Daniel Bard being the other option.

• Arizona Diamondbacks - If Bard had been chosen for the Rockies, then 1B Christian Walker and his 21 HR could have made sense. But he is batting a lowly .208, so I'm glad they went with reliever Joe Mantiply instead, who has a 1.83 ERA over 34.1 innings, while striking out 34 and somehow walking only one hitter so far.

It will be interesting to see who is named the NL starting pitcher. Some will argue for Miami's Sandy Alcantara, but it would be hard to not go with Kershaw or Gonsolin since the game is being played in Los Angeles. Some might push for Gonsolin since this is his first time and he is leading the majors in ERA. But I didn't realize until yesterday that Kershaw has never been the starter for an All-Star game before, an honor it seems like he deserves at least once in his great career.

There are a couple of reserve selections you could pick on here. Ian Happ of the Cubs has 23 doubles, but only 8 HR and a .276/.370/.448 slash line and 129 OPS+—a fine first half, but not obviously All-Star caliber. I might have chosen Nationals 1B Josh Bell instead, as he has 19 doubles, 12 HR, .304/.386/.491 slash, and a 154 OPS+.

And 2B/LF Jeff McNeil is batting .311 with a 131 OPS+ for the Mets, but fans of WAR are no doubt outraged that Cardinals 2B/SS Tommy Edman was not included. He is only slashing .257/.322/.376 with a 102 OPS+. He has only 7 HR, but has 19 SB versus only 3 caught stealing. He's been great defensively, first at 2B and then moved over to SS when the Cardinals brought up slugging rookie Nolan Gorman. All of which adds up to Edman actually having the third highest WAR for all position players so far this year—oddly trailing only his own teammates Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado (what is up with the Cardinals infield and WAR this year?)

Here are players who I'd say are close to being NL all-stars, and therefore might be options should injuries arise in the next week (in alphabetical order per position):

As noted with the AL, there is an abundance of pitchers with really good numbers this year. Some might argue in favor of Rodón, or Strider, or any of the guys listed here really, but in place of which guys that were selected?

I already noted the cases for Edman and Bell. Austin Riley has a strong case too, with his 21 doubles, 23 HR, .282/.349/.559 slash and 146 OPS+.

And I likely wouldn't have predicted at the beginning of the season that neither 1B Freddie Freeman, nor the player the Braves replaced him with, Matt Olson, would be on this NL All-Star squad. Both are doing fine this year, just not (yet) hitting a lot of HRs: Freeman has 27 doubles and 11 HR, a .304/.381/.494 slash and a 142 OPS+, while Olson has a MLB-leading 33 doubles, 13 HR, a .254/.345/.469 slash, and 123 OPS+.

For some fun additional reading, see Sarah Langs' MLB article “15 stats and facts about '22 All-Star rosters.”

All data is from Baseball-Reference.com, and also their subscription service Stathead.com. If you are a big sports fan, be sure to check out the latest features at Stathead and the Sports Reference family of sites.