New ASG voting system is PERFECT

[Vogelbomb]

It's not often that I agree with changes to my favorite sports. Actually, it's damn near impossible. All the new protections of players in the NFL from increased roughing the passer calls to limited contact in offseason practices? Nope. Nobody's putting a gun to these athletes' heads to force them into the league. NFL pro bowl format? Nope. Just get rid of it please. The collision rule at home plate? Nope. Get off the tracks when the train's coming through! I don't remember guys crying about these plays.

The changes I've liked:
- new PAT rule in NFL
- banned long putters in golf

AND
- 2019 MLB ASG voting

Every element of the system MLB instituted this season in electing it's All Stars is perfect.
1. Delayed voting until late May
2. Online exclusive voting. Save the paper. Allow voters to see the up-to-the-day stats.
3. Dual phase voting system. Should ensure the most deserving player gets in 9x out of 10, eliminating purely popular ASG induction

Anyway, bravo MLB. Cheers to a change in a sport that I approve of

[Sexymarinersfan]

Agreed. That was pretty cool. I like how they do the stats. OPS is a big factor for me. I did not realize Altuve was struggling that badly this year, nor aware he's been bothered by injuries.

[DavidGee24]

Depends on what we mean by deserving. Voting for whoever has the best stats after 60 games is really flawed. I like 1/2 how the player is doing this year, 1/2 how he did last year, and maybe as a tiebreaker the player's general reputation.

Example: AL DH. Vogelbach has better stats than JD Martinez right now. How do we think that's going to look by the end of the season, and does your average fan really want to see Vogey instead of JD?

Totally agree with you on the PAT rule, that turned out to be nothing short of brilliant and really improved the quality of and added drama to the game.

[Sexymarinersfan]

I think we can safely say that just about everybody has their own way of deciding who they think is deserving. For instance, I had a couple Mariners whom I love that just HAD to be on my ballot, regardless of numbers this year, or any other's. I do happen to agree that a handful of ball games should not dictate as to whether or not one should be worthy or not of a vote.

[Vogelbomb]

I really like delaying the vote until essentially June -- giving fans two months to see players perform -- rather than the late April release that we've always seen. Barely any season was played and you're putting ballots in peoples hands asking them to honor the best of the yr and it's been a month!

[XpertDBA]

It's not often that I agree with changes to my favorite sports. Actually, it's damn near impossible. All the new protections of players in the NFL from increased roughing the passer calls to limited contact in offseason practices? Nope. Nobody's putting a gun to these athletes' heads to force them into the league. NFL pro bowl format? Nope. Just get rid of it please. The collision rule at home plate? Nope. Get off the tracks when the train's coming through! I don't remember guys crying about these plays.

The changes I've liked:
- new PAT rule in NFL
- banned long putters in golf

AND
- 2019 MLB ASG voting

Every element of the system MLB instituted this season in electing it's All Stars is perfect.
1. Delayed voting until late May
2. Online exclusive voting. Save the paper. Allow voters to see the up-to-the-day stats.
3. Dual phase voting system. Should ensure the most deserving player gets in 9x out of 10, eliminating purely popular ASG induction

Anyway, bravo MLB. Cheers to a change in a sport that I approve of

BTW, they haven't banned long putters in golf....as long as you don't anchor it to your body in any way, they are still allowed. I've played with one for the better part of 30 years and there's absolutely nothing wrong or unfair with it.

[Millikin]

I think it's dumb to have fans vote for the all star game.

Coaches should cast two different ballots. Ballot One for the top-3 (or 5 or 10) players on their own team. Ballot Two for players on other teams in their league (1 or 2 per position).

Maybe let players and/or sports writers vote.

Fans opinions shouldn't count for anything. I follow baseball better than anyone I know IRL and I have only vague notions of who deserves to be an all-star from other teams. I would likely pick "people I've heard of," way too often, because I'm not going to spend much time researching.

[Dr Naysay]

Yeah fans voting is why Zunino is streaks ahead of Narvaez in the voting. Just ridiculous.

[Double Mocha Man]

Depends on what we mean by deserving. Voting for whoever has the best stats after 60 games is really flawed. I like 1/2 how the player is doing this year, 1/2 how he did last year, and maybe as a tiebreaker the player's general reputation.

Example: AL DH. Vogelbach has better stats than JD Martinez right now. How do we think that's going to look by the end of the season, and does your average fan really want to see Vogey instead of JD?

Totally agree with you on the PAT rule, that turned out to be nothing short of brilliant and really improved the quality of and added drama to the game.

David... I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I feel the All-Star game should showcase the best players of the first few months. The Hall of Fame will showcase the perennial all-stars.

Oh, here's an idea: One All-Star team is made up of American and National League players who have the best records this year. They get to play a team of fan favorites. I know that's a lot of voting, but maybe they could all debate each other with 20 players on stage at once.

[Sibelius Hindemith]

With regard to exclusive on-line voting, unless they have the means to keep people from voting multiple times it is still very flawed. One thing they could perhaps do is scale the voting so that the fans of each team collectively have equal clout, but that would only work if the voters were honest about which team they root for. I suppose they could make people register to vote, meaning they would have to submit their SS# to validate their identity, but most people wouldn't feel comfortable doing that i'm guessing. So, for now i would gave to agree with Millikin that the fans shouldn't be involved in the selection process.