It’s called the All-Star Game for a reason. People go to the events and watch them on television because they want to see the big-name superstars.
And one of Major League Baseball’s newest and biggest stars is 22-year-old Yasiel Puig. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ outfielder burst onto the scene, hitting .436 with seven home runs and 16 runs batted in during the month of June. In doing so, Puig transformed the Dodgers into a playoff contender that went 15-11 with him in the lineup.
Three games into July, Puig has continued his hot streak. He is 5-for-13 (.385 batting average) with a home run and three runs batted in during two wins for the Dodgers.
Yet, Philadelphia Phillies’ closer Jonathan Papelbon, who has blown four of his last eight save opportunities and is still likely to be tabbed for a sixth All-Star selection, thinks “it’s an absolute joke” for Puig to even be considered for a roster spot on the National League’s All-Star team?
“The guy’s got a month, I don’t even think he’s got a month in the big leagues,” Papelbon said in an interview on MLB Network Radio(via ESPN). “Just comparing him to this and that, and saying he’s going to make the All-Star team, that’s a joke to me.”
Papelbon makes a valid point… if this were the All-VETERANS game. But it’s the All-Star Game, and in America a new star is born every 30 seconds. The star in Major League Baseball right now is Yasiel Puig and it would be a travesty for him to be excluded for lack of experience.
There have been 99 rookies to play in the All-Star Game since 1948. There were six on last year’s rosters alone. So why should Puig have to take a backseat to someone else just because he played one month less than the Washington Nationals’ phenom Bryce Harper had last season?
And how could one consider the new outfielder undeserving based purely on experience while teams like the lowly Houston Astros — who are the worst team in baseball with a 31-55 record — are required to have a representative at the All-Star Game?
Ask the 40,000-plus who will be in attendance for this year’s game at Citi Field if they’d rather watch Puig or some random San Diego Padres reliever that had to be placed on the team. The answer would be unanimous.
Need more proof that Puig is deserving of a selection? Put this into perspective: He currently ranks 21st among all National League (NL) players in Wins Above Replacement at 2.4 (a statistic used to measure a player’s overall impact) according to Baseball-Reference.com. That means that Puig, who has played in only 26 games, has already outplayed all but 20 NL players in 81 games played.
In the 2012 MLB All-Star Game, the NL team used nine outfielders. Guess where Puig ranks among that group this year? That’s right, ninth. The Cuban-born superstar has earned a spot in the All-Star Game and deserves to be there with the rest of the game’s greats.
The All-Star Game is about the stars and the fans. Major League Baseball should never have lost sight of that. And, even with a home field-advantage hanging in the balance, the game still boils down to being an exhibition of the league’s most talented superstars in one spot for the fans’ pleasure.
With that in mind, it would be a shame to slight Yasiel Puig just because he hasn’t played in some sort of imaginary prerequisite number of games played. It would be an even greater shame to snub the fans and neglect them of one of the top players they’d like to see.
Louis Musto is a reporter and sports talk host for the Sports Journey Broadcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LouisMusto.