Landestoy Luke
By Landestoy Luke
Welcome to Luke-Warm. I contacted Joe and told him Mid-Valley Sports needed to get a baseball column going. After exploring all other options, he finally decided to let me do it. So…here I am. Enjoy.
Well, the All-Star Game is, again, officially pointless. You would think with rosters expanding again this year, they’d find a way to get it right. Yes, the omission of Joey Votto is downright criminal, but there are plenty of other snubs.
Josh Willingham plays in Washington , which may as well make him anonymous (if only his last name as Strasburg). He only leads the NL in OBP and has a line of (BA/OBP/SLG/OPS) .281/.413/ .513/.926 while playing in a park that isn’t necessarily hitter friendly. Yet, he will be spending 3 days off next week while Michael Bourn (.260/ .336/.341/.678) takes up space because of the stupid “every team must be represented” rule.
Usually, bigger market teams don’t have issues with being overlooked, but somehow Carlos Marmol of the Chicago Cubs isn’t even being mentioned in the post selection snub talk (except for here that is). He’s sporting an amazing 17 K/9 IP to go with his 16 saves. It hasn’t been his fault the Cubs haven’t had many games to save (I’m looking at you, Aramis Ramirez, Derek Lee, Lou Pinella and every reliever not named Marmol), but he has arguably been the best reliever in baseball this year. Granted, he walks a lot of guys, but he’s also held batters to a .155 batting average.
It’s also uncommon for good teams to get ignored, but the Padres and Angels got treated like a salad on Torosian’s dinner table. Mat Latos should be mentioned in any conversation about the great young pitchers in baseball, but he gets no love when it comes to the All-Star game. Even with the Padres posting the best record in the NL, Latos’s 2.62 ERA and sub 1.00 WHIP may as well be invisible. Perhaps even more baffling was the omission of Angel Jered Weaver (though die-hard Halo fan Andy Villathedevil could care less. Or couldn’t care less?). Weaver leads the AL in strikeouts, has an ERA below 3 and a great WHIP of 1.07. If he was wearing pinstripes, he’d be there…although, if he was wearing pinstripes, he might go headcase like brother Jeff did when he donned the Bronx uni.
Finally, Dodger reliever Hong Chih-Kuofax got sKrewed. In an attempt to go Wal-Mart, the NL put the elderly to work and chose Arthur Lee Rhodes over Kuofax. Kuofax has a miniscule ERA of 1.03 to go with an even more miniscule 0.72 WHIP. He striKes out almost 13 batters per 9 innings and has stranded 91% of baserunners this year. If he was a drain on Social Security like Rhodes , maybe he would have got the nod. Kuo’s selection would have raised MLB’s international profile in Taiwan , but I’m sure Rhodes ’s selection will raise baseball’s profile in assisted living facilities.
So don’t be fooled when you’re sold on the notion that “this one counts”. When you don’t choose the best players, then you’re just selling tickets to the wolf show. I may pass on watching the All-Star Game this year and instead partake in my favorite activity: Not watching soccer.
Landestoy Luke is a former semi-pro baseball player in the California-Nevada Independent League. His claim to fame is striking out former Angel Juan Beniquez with the bases loaded in the 8th inning of Game 3 of the consolation series vs. the Pahrump Roasts in 1997. After spending some time as an advance scout in the Mexicali League, Luke now spends his time as a freelance writer
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