All-Star Game - AL Catcher

[navamind]

As of right now, I'd probably have this as my AL AST starters:

LF: Gordon
CF: Cain
RF: Trout
3B: Donaldson
SS: Weak class, drawing blind from Iglesias, Semien (wish he was a 2B) or A. Escobar.
2B: Kipnis
1B: Miggy
C: Vogt
DH: Cruz
P: Gray

Could make a case for Bogaerts and Miller as well. I went with Miller. It is a very underwhelming group right now.

my ballot:
C: Vogt; Posey
1B: Miggy; Goldschmidt
2B: Kipnis; Gordon
SS: Miller; Crawford
3B: Donaldson; Carpenter
OF: Trout, Cain, Reddick; Pederson, Harper, Pollock
DH: Cruz

 

[Isaiah4110]

Gordon over Reddick? How do you justify .260 with 6 HRs and 25 RBIs over .300 with 8 HR and 32 RBIs?

Cain over Jones/Brantley? I had Ellsbury, Trout and Reddick before Ellsbury went down with injury, but his playing time is too low at this point for me.

Here are my picks from the stats as of May 14th:

I try to be as unbiased/non-homerish as possible. Semien had a very clear statistical lead for the first month and a half of the season but recently hit a pretty bad extended skid.

 

[Fountain City Blues]

Gordon over Reddick? How do you justify .260 with 6 HRs and 25 RBIs over .300 with 8 HR and 32 RBIs?

Cain over Jones/Brantley? I had Ellsbury, Trout and Reddick before Ellsbury went down with injury, but his playing time is too low at this point for me.

Here are my picks from the stats as of May 14th:View attachment 16327

I try to be as unbiased/non-homerish as possible.

Has more to do with defense than offense. Same reason I didn't pencil in Semien right away.

fWAR totals right now:

Reddick: 1.9
Gordon: 1.8
Brantley: 1.4

Basically an insignificant difference with time to spare. I lean towards Gordon, for some obvious reasons, and because he has generally been regarded as the best LF'er in the AL the past several years by most metrics, so I am kind of giving him an incumbency bias as well for the time being. His OBP is still around 370, so it's not like he's all glove and no bat.

CF:

Trout: 3.1
Cain: 2.3
Jones: 1.8
Ellsbury: 1.4

Trout while a much better overall package than Cain, is a lesser defensive CF'er- so I bump him to RF for defensive purposes. Cain is the best remaining CF'er left, imo, so I stuck him in Center. Plenty of good C-OF'er candidates this year, but I am going to go with the somewhat homerish take of Gordon based on his DRS and UZR numbers this year.

Just a quick look at why I put Cain over Trout in CF.

American League Leaderboards 2015 Center Feilders Fielding Statistics | FanGraphs Baseball

 

[Isaiah4110]

Has more to do with defense than offense. Same reason I didn't pencil in Semien right away.

fWAR totals right now:

Reddick: 1.9
Gordon: 1.8
Brantley: 1.4

Basically an insignificant difference with time to spare. I lean towards Gordon, for some obvious reasons, and because he has generally been regarded as the best LF'er in the AL the past several years by most metrics, so I am kind of giving him an incumbency bias as well for the time being. His OBP is still around 370, so it's not like he's all glove and no bat.

CF:

Trout: 3.1
Cain: 2.3
Jones: 1.8
Ellsbury: 1.4

Trout while a much better overall package than Cain, is a lesser defensive CF'er- so I bump him to RF for defensive purposes. Cain is the best remaining CF'er left, imo, so I stuck him in Center. Plenty of good C-OF'er candidates this year, but I am going to go with the somewhat homerish take of Gordon based on his DRS and UZR numbers this year.

Just a quick look at why I put Cain over Trout in CF.

American League Leaderboards 2015 Center Feilders Fielding Statistics | FanGraphs Baseball

That makes sense. I will say also though that I ignore *actual* position when picking outfielders for the ASG. Semien has had a really rough go of it defensively this year, but I usually pick based off of offensive stats in ASG voting. Defense would be used as a "tiebreaker" on my ASG rosters.