#(I can pretend that buster posey is still playing if I use him as a body reference for baseball henry. this is fine it's all fine.)

[chiropteracupola]

ADIÓS PELOTAAAAAAAAA!!

[gouache and acrylic on recycled chipboard, 2024]

[junker-town]

The only correct 2017 All-Star ballot for the National League

The All-Star Game isn’t just a reward for a good three months. It should be a reward for brilliant careers, too.

Baseball is a game of pointless arguments and unanswerable questions. Mays vs. Mantle. Kershaw vs. Koufax. The real answer is that all excellent baseball players are excellent, by definition, and we’re lucky to watch them. But why settle for something boring when we can have pointless arguments and unanswerable questions?

In this spirit, nothing is more pointless and essential than arguing about All-Star voting.

We all remember last year, when Hatted Man beat out Other Hatted Man in the voting for Position, and the baseball world was completely stunned. Unless we don’t remember a thing about the voting, not one single thing. But I still take this stuff seriously because I enjoy looking back at history and seeing lists like this:

That’s on the Hank Aaron page at Baseball-Reference, and it’s simply delightful. If there was an All-Star Game during the ‘60s, Hank Aaron was there. Because he was Hank Aaron. That was the end of that argument.

Here’s the Willie Mays page:

In the first half of 1963, Mays’ numbers were down. He was hitting just .271/.352/.468, which was fine, but not to his standards. He wasn’t having as good of an offensive first half as Wes Covington or Don Demeter, but he still made the All-Star Game. Because he was Willie Mays. If you wanted to start an All-Star Game for the National League in the ‘60s, your best bet was to be Mays or Aaron. And if you weren’t, you probably should have thought about becoming them.

Now, it’s not like baseball will ever have a guarantee of that kind of All-Star hegemony again. For one thing, Mays and Aaron were both historic, fantastic anomalies, and for another, there are more teams in the league now, which means more individual competition. But I love the idea of making the All-Star teams a reward for extraordinary careers, with only some recognition of first-half stats mixed in. It gives us more Hanks Aaron and fewer Bryans LaHair.

With that in mind, here is the only correct ballot for the National League All-Star Game. I’m sorry to inform you that your ballot is empirically wrong, and this one is right. With voting only lasting a couple more days, you should vote the maximum number of times to make up for being such a fool earlier.

Also, it helps that most of the excellent players we’re used to are in the middle of excellent seasons, too.

(Note: I tried to quantify this idea last year, and it just led to arguments about me ranking someone a “7” in the “Want to Watch Him” category over someone else, who got an “8.” I’m all for dumb arguments, but ...)

C - Buster Posey

This is just about the easiest choice on the ballot, but it still affords us an example to share. Posey is having a fabulous offensive season, and while he’s not exactly the Hank Aaron of catching, he’s as close as anyone’s come in his generation. He’s hitting .340, he has 10 homers, he’s a fabulous defender, and without him, the Giants’ staff ERA would be approximately 43.00. The catcher with offensive numbers that are close is Tyler Flowers.

Which is a perfect example. Say that Flowers was hitting .357 instead of .327. Now say that Posey was hitting .290 instead of .340. Give Flowers the edge in OPS, OPS+, and WAR. In this scenario, would Flowers be the obvious choice? Some voters would say yes.

I would remained convinced, however, that Tyler Flowers is Tyler Flowers, and Buster Posey is Buster Posey. I know which one I would rather watch in the All-Star Game, and there’s no disrespect intended toward Flowers. It’s just extra respect being shoveled toward Posey.

The players who get that extra shoveling of respect are the ones who do well here. Call it the Greater Shovel Theory of All-Star Voting. If a player deserves the shovel, he deserves the vote.

1B - Paul Goldschmidt

Some housekeeping, first: Cody Bellinger isn’t on the ballot, and even though he’s having the kind of season that would make him a contender on the Only Correct All-Star Ballot™, even as a rookie, he’s not going to be mentioned here. Write-in votes for the All-Star Game are some third-party nonsense, and no one cares about your moral stance.

So under the Mays-Aaron method of voting, that makes it a two-player race between Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto. Both of them are having great seasons; both of them are having remarkable careers.

Goldschmidt is having a slightly better first half, though, which makes for a fine tiebreaker. See? You can use first halves. It’s just silly to use only first halves. Goldschmidt is powering a surprising contender, and he’s on a Hall of Fame path. That’s exactly the kind of player you want starting an All-Star Game.

2B - Daniel Murphy

Last year, he wouldn’t have been here. “It’s not the All-First-Half Game,” I would have quipped, furrowing my brow and adjusting my ascot. But Murphy is clearly Rod Carew now (he’s hitting .342 after hitting .347 last season), and we need to adjust our expectations.

Also, there really aren’t a lot of exciting second base seasons in the National League. Kolten Wong has done a nice job reinventing himself, and Brandon Phillips’ season is putting a nice exclamation point at the end of his career. Maybe write in a vote for Jose Altuve is in order? Ignore what I wrote up there about write-in votes.

SS - Corey Seager

To be a young player on an All-Star ballot, you either have to be Galactus, consuming planets whole (see Bellinger and Aaron Judge), or you have to be coming off a brilliant start to your career. Seager is the latter, and it’s far more likely at this point that he’ll be in a similar column of mine in 2027 than not. He’s already a perennial All-Star, and we should just accept that.

Even though [squints] uh, Zack Cozart has a higher OPS, it’s Seager who is defining the position in his league. This could have been a close race, with Trea Turner, Addison Russell, Dansby Swanson, Orlando Arcia, and Trevor Story all scheduled to start at their position before the season started.

This was not a close race.

3B - Kris Bryant

Ah, this is a mess. Justin Turner is hitting nearly .400, and he has a career to celebrate at this point, but he’s also missed about 25 games. Jake Lamb is having another outstanding first half, and he’s playing for a contender. Anthony Rendon overcame some early struggles to rake for the Nationals, and he would also be a fine choice. Nolan Arenado is one of the greatest players in the game, which seems important.

Kris Bryant is the reigning MVP, though, and he currently has seven points of OPS on Arenado, who gets to play in Coors Field. I’m really, really torn here, but I can’t pretend like the world doesn’t care just a little bit more about Bryant. He’s not the defender that Arenado is (which is why he trails the Rockies’ third baseman in WAR), but I’ll use the MVP as a tiebreaker.

It’s a helluva tiebreaker, if we’re being honest.

OF - Charlie Blackmon, Bryce Harper, Giancarlo Stanton

Not every All-Star ballot will be stacked with hometown players. The Marlins are hosting the All-Star Game, and that’s swell, but if I didn’t stack the NL All-Star ballot with Padres last year, let’s not pretend like it’s the most important category.

It’s still a category, though. And we have a dilemma. Giancarlo Stanton is a home-run deity, a star, one of the most recognizable names in a sport that’s desperate for them. He’s having a great season, with 20 home runs and a top-five OPS among qualified outfielders. He also happens to play for the team that’s hosting the game. He’s in, right?

Except Marcell Ozuna also has 20 home runs. He has a higher average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage than Stanton, plus he’s a better fielder and runner. He also plays for the team hosting the game. So we’re in quite a pickle.

For now, though, Stanton is the star. Ozuna is the possible star that we’re still getting used to. If he shows up next year hitting like this, he’ll be a strong contender (just like Charlie Blackmon up there), even if he won’t have the hometown bonus points. It’s still just a little early for him, though, and I feel like this would be a reward for his first half more than a good-not-great career.

Stanton it is, then. The tie goes to the 27-year-old who’s almost halfway to 500 homers. There’s no point in a starting All-Star outfield in Miami without Stanton.

Harper is an obvious choice, a recognizable star having a tremendous year. He comes closest to the Mays/Aaron description up there, and just like those two, I hope he makes a bunch of All-Star Games when he’s in his late 30s and fading, too.

Blackmon makes it over other contenders like Ozuna and Michael Conforto (too new), Matt Kemp and Jay Bruce (too clompy), and Yoenis Cespedes (too much missed time). He doesn’t have the same gravitas as some of the other players on this list, but with a couple more seasons like this, he won’t need to hit .321 with 10 triples and 16 homers to merit consideration and just squeak in the final slot.

This all leaves us with a final ballot that looks like this:

C - Buster Posey 1B - Paul Goldschmidt 2B - Daniel Murphy SS - Corey Seager 3B - Kris Bryant OF - Giancarlo Stanton OF - Charlie Blackmon OF - Bryce Harper

This is not a starting lineup that would confuse future generations. This makes baseball sense. It makes historical sense.

This is the only correct ballot for the National League in the 2017 All-Star Game. You’re welcome.

[junker-town]

The unwritten rules of waiting several years to throw a baseball at Bryce Harper

Bryce Harper hit a home run off Hunter Strickland three years ago, and it had ramifications in 2017. For some reason.

It was just over five years ago that Bryce Harper was in the news because of another plunking. In 2012, Cole Hamels hit Harper for breaking the unwritten rule of existing. It remains one of the sillier reasons someone has been thrown at over the last decade — “Because he’s there,” said the George Mallory of pitching — and I figured it would be the silliest reason someone would ever throw at Harper.

We have a challenger, though. There was a Memorial Day donnybrook between the Nationals and Giants, and it looked like this:

Who was at fault? Who acted like a nincompoop? We’ll rank the people at fault in order, from “nincompoopiest” to “pretty chill, actually.” Starting with ...

Hunter Strickland

Strickland threw at Harper for a home run he hit. In 2014. During a series in which the Giants were victorious. Which happened shortly before they won a championship.

That’s where it should have ended. The plunking was already done, and it was a 97-mph fastball right to the butt of Harper’s soul. Strickland was the punchline of the 2014 postseason, but he finished with a ring. Harper had the home runs, but he had 1000 pounds of what-ifs yoked to his neck. Advantage: Strickland.

Just ask Harper:

Harper repeatedly mentioned that Strickland has a World Series ring, and Nats lost the series. Why still harbor a grudge?

— Mark Zuckerman (@MarkZuckerman) May 29, 2017

Dunno. It makes no sense. Let’s take a look at the tape.

That baseball was two weeks away from retirement, but then it was murdered. Seems like that should be against the unwritten rules. Sure, Harper looked at the ball for a beat, but wouldn’t you? When I hit a golf ball that far, I stare at it approvingly, like, yeah, I just made physics do that. If I hit a home run that far, I would probably pretend the bat was a spyglass and yell, “Yarrr, she won’t be troublin’ us anymore, mateys” before I left the box.

I would get hit an awful lot with baseballs.

But, fine, there was a little admiring from Harper, but nothing that deserved a baseball to the butt.

Here’s round two, though:

Now that’s a fella admiring his home run. However, to play Boras’ advocate, a lot of that had to do with “fair or foul?” more than anything that broke an unwritten rule.

Strickland noticed that Harper was about 55 feet away from first base when the ball landed, though, and words were exchanged.

Death stares were exchanged, even. How would this end? Tune in next week for another exciting episode of Harper vs. Strickland!

Then the Giants won the World Series.

Then 2015 happened.

Then 2016 happened.

Everything was pretty much settled. The show was cancelled.

There was a parade in 2014, and Hunter Strickland was in it. His float came right before Metallica’s float, which featured James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich waving to an adoring crowd while the Hall and Oates song “I Can’t Go For That” blared over loudspeakers. That detail has absolutely nothing to do with this story, but I’ve been keeping it in for so long that, here, you figure out what to do with it.

Bryce Harper got 30 plate appearances vs. the Giants in 2015. Which means there were 30 chances for various teammates to settle the score. Jean Machi faced Harper when the Giants were behind 9-2 with the bases empty in the eighth. George Kontos faced him when the Giants were leading 10-5 with the bases empty in the seventh. Strickland did not face Harper because Bruce Bochy was trying to win.

Harper got 24 plate appearances vs. the Giants in 2016. Strickland did not face Harper because Bruce Bochy was trying to win. At no point were baseballs thrown in Harper’s direction. This is because everyone had forgotten about whatever happened two years earlier. Remember the parade? Metallica was there. The grudge was gone, at least when it came to everyone else involved.

Which means it’s super weird for Strickland to remember that vividly, to use a baseball as a weapon because he was still so offended about 2014. I guarantee you that striking Harper out with a 97-mph fastball would have felt about six million times better than hitting him in the thigh.

So do that.

Bryce Harper

If Harper jaws a bit and takes his base, he gets to play in every game over the next few weeks. He decided to charge and use his helmet as a weapon.

Bad decision. Major League Baseball takes it very seriously when a player fires a rock-hard projectile at another player in the hopes of inflicting bodily harm and pain. Unless it’s a baseball. Then it’s totally cool.

If Harper’s helmet connected with Strickland’s knee, it could have broken a bone and caused a serious injury. Which would really make me upset if you couldn’t say the same thing about the the baseball that started this whole mess.

No, the most egregious part of Harper’s decision was that he looked like a goober throwing his helmet into right field. Here comes the angry baseball man, filled with baseball anger!

Yikes! Be mindful of that helmet, for it is a dangerous projectile!

Gadzooks! Here it comes!

lol you idiot

Years after you’ve forgotten that Hunter Strickland was a thing, you’ll remember Harper chucking his helmet into right field. It’s like Nolan Ryan giving a noogie to himself instead of Robin Ventura.

But if Harper didn’t charge the mound, every dingus who has been victimized by a long home run and an admiring gaze would have felt emboldened to do the same thing. That is, just about every active pitcher. Maybe they’ll still be emboldened, but at least they’ll know that it might come at a cost. And they’ll know that a prideful Harper will spend his entire offseason practicing throwing his helmet in his garage.

So I’m not even sure if I disagree with Harper charging. It was proactive protection. Even Giants announcer Duane Kuiper said, “I don’t blame Harper for going out. Not one bit.” There was a dumb, schoolyard method behind this madness.

Except throw the helmet straight, you idiot.

Buster Posey

Apparently, this is a thing. When Strickland hit Harper, Buster Posey’s shoulders collapsed in exasperation. Unlike what we’re used to, Posey didn’t try to protect his pitcher.

Posey is wearing a mask, so I can’t see if he’s giving the best you-idiot face of the year ... but I’m absolutely positive that he’s giving the best you-idiot face of the year.

I’ll be honest: There isn’t a lot of visual evidence that Posey likes to be in the middle of these things. Madison Bumgarner redassed his way to a bench-clearing incident with Yasiel Puig, but it happened after a ball was put in play. Bumgarner yelled at Wil Myers after the inning was over earlier in the year. The benches cleared in the 2014 World Series when the delicate pitcher took exception to failing in front of everybody, but that was also after the play was over. Chase Utley was already on his way to first in 2010.

But evidence does exist that Posey is willing to get between a hitter and his pitcher.

So it’s not like Posey’s a lily-livered coward. He’s just like the rest of us.

“Dude, really? That was three years ago. You’re fine. We’re all fine.”

He sat back behind home plate with a you-break-it-you-buy-it attitude, and I don’t blame him one bit. Like he needs to recover from a separated shoulder at age 30 because some doofus got his feelings hurt in 2014.

It is my solemn promise to you, gentle reader, that if you charge Chad Dalderban at the bar because of something he yelled at you in high school, I will let you. As fists rain down upon your previously beautiful face, you will wonder where I am.

I am keeping my face beautiful, thank you for asking. Because high school tiffs don’t mean a damned thing.

The same goes for dumb 2014 baseball tiffs. I can almost understand it if Strickland gave up the homer that allowed the Nationals to advance. As is, the Giants won. Strickland recovered from the acute dingeritis that threatened his career in that postseason. He’s had a solid career. Harper has won an MVP. It’s over. Find something else to be mad about.

Knowing baseball players, they won’t need an excuse. There’s always something to be mad about. And it’s putting my kids through college.