Yesterday we looked at the "voting constituencies" — fans, players and manager — responsible for the selection of the National League’s All-Star representatives. Today, we’ll review those groups who selected the Junior Circuit stars.

The All-Stars were:

Wow! The first thing you might notice is how well the AL fans did in picking their starters — every player was in the top three best at his position, and seven of the nine were the best at the position. That meant that the fans picked best of the three consistuencies:

Some more observations:

• The fans who voted for the AL starters either had a clearer choice of candidates, or they simply picked more astutely than the fans who chose the NL starters (fat lot of good that did them!).
• Though his hands were a bit tied by having to select someone from the Orioles, Joe Girardi could’ve — and should’ve — picked Nick Markakis, whose 2.2 WAR is better than Ty Wigginton’s 0.4 (Weaver’s Tantrum readers seem to agree in their poll).
• Overall, Girardi really bombed with his reserve selections. In addition to the Markakis oversight, he bypassed the AL’s best player by WAR in Kevin Youkilis (3.4 WAR) for Paul Konerko (2.1 WAR) and opted for his own Alex Rodriguez (2.2 WAR) when he could’ve had a different Alex, Alex Gonzalez, Blue Jays’ infielder (2.4 WAR).
• But Girardi, a former catcher, was better at picking his reserve pitchers. One of his "worst" selections, Joakim Soria (0.9 WAR), was forced a bit as the Royals’ representative. But Girardi could’ve easily chosen one of his league’s best pitchers in the Royals’ Zack Greinke (2.7 WAR). And Andrew Bailey is a reliable closer but an inexplicable choice when Francisco Liriano, Felix Hernandex and Gavin Floyd were available.
• Had the fans chosen Youkilis, whom Nick Swisher edged as the 34th man, they would’ve scored a nearly perfect 1.3.

So which group did the best of all, counting both AL and NL voters?

Another way to look at the groups is to combine them across leagues:

So it would appear that, when it comes to selecting the best, the players know, er, best. Fans aren’t far behind. Ironically, the men responsible for actually managing the All-Stars appear to be least qualified to select them. That the bigger constituencies — the fans and the players — chose better may be due to the "wisdom of crowds" effect. For whatever reason, though, ceding some of the selection-making to the players would seem to be one of the few wise recent decisions regarding the Midsummer Classic.

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 10:53 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.