The only correct way to fill out an MLB 2015 All-Star ballot

Every year, I tell myself not to care about All-Star voting. Every year, I care about All-Star voting.

It’s the paradox, right? The All-Star Game isn’t some sort of living monument to the old baseball gods, the only determination of who’s better than whom. It’s an exhibition. It’s fun, it’s meaningful, it’s meaningless. It straddles the line between care/don’t care so perfectly.

We can all agree the voting is a farce, though, just a danged farce, now that ballot-stuffing fans have figured out how to make the transition to the digital age. Omar Infante might start at second base, even though he’s one of the worst regulars in baseball. But without the voting, we wouldn’t be talking about the All-Star Game, and just ignoring it completely isn’t any fun. I care. I don’t care. This stupid system is broken and hilarious.

All I can offer, then, is my super-special technique of subjective All-Star voting. All these years writing about baseball, and I’ve never written about it. That’s probably because I tell myself that you don’t care. But you do, oh, you do. Every year.

Here’s the perfect three-part system to filling out an All-Star Ballot. PERFECT, I TELL YOU.

Barry Bonds didn’t make the All-Star Game in 2006. He started slow, and he had only a .474 on-base percentage by the All-Star Break, so he wasn’t voted in and he wasn’t selected as a reserve. The starters in the outfield corners for the National League that year: Alfonso Soriano and Jason Bay.

Both of them had great careers, sure, but that’s one fewer chance well all had to watch Barry Bonds on a national stage. And, brothers and sisters, I could sure go for some more Barry Bonds these days. Do you have any Barry Bonds? C’mon, just give me a little taste, whatever you got. I’m telling you, I just need to watch a little more Barry Bonds.

We’re not just talking about the greatest and most prominent record-setters, either. Matt Holliday is one of the three starters in line to start the 2015 All-Star Game, and even though he’s hurt now, that’s a good thing. He’s been a perennial All-Star. When you cobble together a list of the best outfielders of his generation, yup, he’s on there. So I enjoy watching him against talents of similar repute. David Price vs. Matt Holliday is an at-bat I would watch gleefully, for example, regardless of what their first-half stats might suggest.

Fernando Rodney vs. Bryan LaHair? Not so much, even if they were both All-Stars having great first halves three years ago. Always err on the side of the “star” part in All-Star, and the starting lineup will never look like a bad haircut in your high school yearbook.

Because first-half stats still count, dang it. They’re real to me. And if Dee Gordon wants to hit .400 for a month or two, I’m going to want to see him in the All-Star Game, even if that’s irrational by modern sabermetric standards.

Remember when Chris Davis hit 37 freaking home runs in the first half of 2013? Yes, we knew that was probably a fluke, even then. We knew that even if Davis had turned a corner in his career, almost no one will ever be a true 37-homer-in-a-half player. But, my goodness, how do you keep a player like that, the absolute buzz of baseball, out of the starting lineup? He got my vote then, and if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change it. Unless I could vote for Bonds but, well, we’re off track again.

There’s a chance you’ll get something like a Mike Lowell mirage with 28 first-half homers not even remotely resembling anything the hitter will come close to again. That’s OK, though. All you need to do is at least consider the first half. It still has just 33 percent, remember. Unless there’s a filibuster, it’s probably not going to make that much of a difference.

There’s some overlap with the first category. Good. That second category is kind of bunk, you know, so this tilts the system in the right direction.

So, yes, I want to watch the living legends, the players who will be in Cooperstown one day. It’s why it made sense that Derek Jeter started the All-Star Game last year, but this category isn’t just for players like that. This is a wild-card slot for anything you want.

I like watching Jose Altuve. He’s shorter than other baseball players and he can hit the snot out of baseballs. He’s a treasure.

/click

I like Marcus Semien. He has big toes for thumbs in the field right now, but he’s a compelling, young player, and I want to see him hit against Johnny Cueto or Cole Hamels because that seems like a baseball event worth watching.

/click

Norichika Aoki is unique and amazing and hilarious and every baseball game should have more Norichika Aoki.

/clicks 30 times like a danged homer

If a young player like Kris Bryant doesn’t have the history behind him, and he doesn’t have the best stats from a National League third baseman this year, this is the way you could justify a vote for him. You want to see him play, and you want to see him play against the best possible competition. Sometimes, it’s that simple.

That’s the methodology, all right. On Wednesday, we’ll look at how you can turn this into pseudo-science, which is my favorite kind of science, and we’ll use the method to pick our empirically correct and indisputable 2015 All-Star ballots.