We’re in the last weekend of the baseball season and it’s time to start the awards parade with selections for the final 2013 National League All-Star team. TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage makes this a season-ending tradition, because I find it foolish that we place all the emphasis on what players are All-Stars at the halfway point (with voting beginning even earlier), rather than which players produced the best body of work for an entire season.
The All-Star Game may be history, but in the MLB coverage at TheSportsNotebook, the real conversation about the All-Stars should be just getting heated up. There should be more emphasis placed on whose best at their spot at season’s end, not in mid-July. What follows is TheSportsNotebook’s view of how the National League All-Stars should stack up as we head into the season’s final 2 ½ months.
With the baseball season a little past the one-quarter mark, TheSportsNotebook is laying out the case for who should be leading in the race for All-Star positions and major awards. Today our MLB coverage focuses on the National League.
There’s only five days left in the regular season and time to put together a season-ending All-Star team for each league. With the National League playoff picture looking close to settled (St. Louis won again last night, Los Angeles is still three back and Milwaukee is all but eliminated from the one race still really hot), we’ll start in the senior circuit.
TheSportsNotebook’s format starts, obviously enough, with a player at each everyday position. We will then round the team out with five starting pitchers, two setup relievers and one closer. The MVP selection that then derives from this ballot will appear sometime next week before the playoffs start on Friday. On we go with TheSportsNotebook’s 2012 National League All-Stars
Perhaps no outfielder has been much of revelation this season—at least offensively—as San Francisco left fielder Melky Cabrera. Acquired from Kansas City in the offseason, Cabrera has been good for solid defense—usually as a centerfielders—and showing stretches of being able to hit for average with some consistency. He’s given a desperate Giants’ offense much more, posting an on-base percentage/slugging percentage stat line of .393/.520, hitting seven home runs and driving the ball in the gaps with consistency.
By the middle of May the race to be the National League’s best centerfielder looked like kind of like the race for the NBA title during the Michael Jordan era—it was about watching to see who would finish second. That’s how dominant Matt Kemp was for the Los Angeles Dodgers, as he rattled off a .444 on-base percentage and a stunning .719 slugging percentage in a tough hitter’s park, keying his team’s scorching start. Then Kemp went down with a hamstring injury. Then he came back and promptly re-injured the hammy. Now he’s just hoping to be able to play in Kansas City for the July 10 All-Star Game
The San Diego Padres don’t have much in the way of offense. The lineup is anemic under the best of circumstances and having to hit in the vast dimensions of Petco Park is in fact the worst of circumstances. But it hasn’t stopped their 28-year-old third baseman Chase Headley from continuing the breakout year he enjoyed in 2011 and building on it in 2012.
The Houston Astros are going through the growing pains of rebuilding, but better days are ahead for this young team, thanks to the emergence of several quality young players. Foremost among them is second baseman Jose Altuve, the 22-year-old second baseman who leads up our discussion of National League All-Star candidates at his position.
The Chicago Cubs haven’t had much to cheer about this season, but one of the bright spots has been the play of first baseman Bryan LaHair. He was—and for that matter still is—seen as a placeholder until the team is ready to call up Anthony Rizzo from Triple A, and the 29-year-old LaHair had never done anything spectacular or even noteworthy in his time in the big leagues. But as we go into Wednesday’s games he’s having a great year with the bat, vaulted himself onto the front tier of National League first baseman in the All-Star race, and is opening up some interesting discussions over what the future might hold.
San Francisco Giants’ catcher Buster Posey has picked up where he left off at the time early last season when he was knocked out for the year after breaking his leg in a play at the plate. After coming up in his rookie year and being an integral part of the team that won the 2010 World Series, then getting off to a good start in ’11, Posey is back and hitting the ball consistently, marking him as not only one of the National League’s top catchers, but arguably it’s most valuable, given his team’s hitting struggles.
The SportsNotebook’s choices for the National League All-Star team.