The Lunatic Fringe

So…yesterday the All-Star Voting update came out, and the Giants, all of them, have fallen out of first place.  So go rectify that now!

So let’s take a look at this:

The Cardinals’ Yadier Molina has overtaken Buster Posey, leading by 90,456 votes.

The Mets’ David Wright has overtaken Pablo Sandoval, and leads by 128,831 votes.

The Rockies’ Troy Tulowitzki continues to lead Brandon Crawford, now by 1,347,070 votes.  But Troy’s injured, and is unlikely to make an All-Star Game start.  (The starter, in that case, won’t be determined by votes, but it can’t hurt.)

The Reds’ Brandon Phillips continues to lead Marco Scutaro, and leads by 325,258 votes.

That last one is probably the one that Giants fans should take care about.  He’s the one who should absolutely should get into the All-Star Game, and as a starter, but that the rest of the baseball world isn’t paying attention to.

Because, let’s face it, you don’t have to campaign for the reigning NL MVP.  With Posey’s mini-slump, Molina has taken a bit of a lead in the statistical categories, but when it comes to stars, few are shining bigger than Posey right now.

With Pablo, especially with his latest injury, it’d be illogical to argue against David Wright.  The only compelling argument I could come up with is that Pablo should be in there so the Mets fans at Citi Field can see a winner on the field.  That’s not a bad argument.

But Marco Scutaro…

Baseball fans might still be thinking of the plucky Oakland A’s second baseman.  Or the solid, if unspectacular Boston Red Sox second baseman.  But Scutaro is no longer either of those guys.

You could argue that without Scutaro, the Giants wouldn’t have become World Series champions.  His run at the end of last season was historic.  And this season, after a rough start, he’s really turned it on.  He leads all NL second basemen in batting average.  He is a close second in on-base percentage and OPS, and a close third in slugging.  And he’s done it, coming back from an injury that could keep others out for months, playing with a useless mallet finger.

But he’s also one of baseball’s good soldiers, a good player and a good guy.  At 37, he’s never been an All-Star.

You don’t think that character matters?  How many times have you not voted for Alex Rodriguez, or Ryan Braun, or for that matter Barry Bonds, because you didn’t like who they were, or the controversies they were embroiled in?

Right now, there is no statistical comparison between Scutaro and the current leader, Brandon Phillips.  Phillips has the home run total (11 to Scutaro’s 2), but even with that, Scutaro has a higher slugging percentage (.438 to .425).  In pretty much no way could you not vote for Scutaro over Phillips on a purely statistical scale.

Matt Carpenter is a different story.  Scutaro leads him in batting average (.332 to .322), but Carpenter leads in OBP (.403 to .386), slugging (.472 to .438) and OPS (.875 to .823).  He has more walks than Scutaro (34 to 22), but more than twice as many strikeouts (41 to just 19 for Scutaro).  And Carpenter just hit his 6th home run of the season on national television, though probably after everyone had fallen asleep due to the rain delay.

There is no doubt, Carpenter is having a fine season…but he’s still a very green player.  He hasn’t even played a full season in the majors yet, missing a fair part of the 2012 season to injury).  In the postseason last year, he only played in three games against the Giants in the NLCS, though I’m not sure why.  Considering he played in 3,4 and 6, I’m guessing it wasn’t injury.

Scutaro has earned this through his years of being a fine ballplayer, on and off the field.  He’s won world championships, and was a big part of that winning.  And he is truly a star.  That may come for Carpenter yet…

Plus, it’d really piss off Cardinals fans to miss out on Carpenter AND Molina.  And that’s a reward in itself.  Geeze, those guys can be smug, and I’ve rarely seen such a collection of offensive comments made against opposing teams…even from New York and Philly fans.  So no sympathy.

Vote Scutaro.  And Posey.  And, I won’t stop you if you vote for Sandoval.  Hell, vote for Belt, because why not.  But get Scutaro into the game.  He deserves it!