Here’s a fun fact for you, via Ed Price:
Fans Know What Fans Want, And Fans Don’t Want David Ortiz
Voting so far for AL DH in All-Star Game: 1. Vlad Guerrero, 2. Hideki Matsui, 3. Ken Griffey Jr., 4. Pat Burrell, 5. David Ortiz.
Now, there are two ways of dealing with a bit of information like this. The first - and the most popular - is to criticize. “The fans voted for who? The fans got it wrong.” If the role of the internet is to serve as the world’s most overzealous watchdog, then All Star Game voting allows many an annual opportunity to point out when things have gone awry, and that fans should’ve voted for Player X over Player Z, because Player X has been better and isn’t the All Star Game all about rewarding superior performance?
I don’t like that, though. To me, the All Star Game is all about featuring the players the fans want to see. That’s why they’re responsible for the voting. As such, it isn’t fair to offer criticism, because you’re criticizing an opinion. If Player X has been better than Player Z, but Player Z got more votes, then it follows that Player Z deserves to be in the game, because more people want to see him, even if he hasn’t played as well. Who cares if Player X has more homers? Maybe he isn’t as entertaining, or maybe he’s kind of a dick. Or maybe something else. Performance is important, but it clearly isn’t everything.
So my personal approach is to criticize less and learn more. We can learn a lot from how the fans vote. With that in mind, what can we learn from the current order of American League DH vote tallies?
1) The fans love Vladimir Guerrero. Guerrero’s got it all - he’s playing really well, he’s been good for a while, nobody has anything negative to say about him, and he’s both unique and consistently exciting.
2) After Guerrero, the fans would rather see (A) a broken-down 35 year old batting .227, (B) a broken-down 40 year old batting .186, and (C) a broken-down 33 year old who got released last week than David Ortiz.
There you have it. The fans have voted, and, through today, David Ortiz has been deemed less watchable than two unwatchable relics and one guy you can’t currently watch at all.
Tough times in Boston. Tough times, indeed.
See More:
