Brian Dozier of Fulton and Southern Miss ended last week as the American League leader among second basemen in just about every statistic that matters.
Dozier, in his fourth season with the Minnesota Twins, led the league’s second basemen in runs scored (57), home runs (15), RBI (37) and doubles (23). His OPS (on-base percentage, plus slugging percentage) at .862 trailed only Cleveland’s Jason Kipnis.
Dozier is hitting a career-best .272. And there’s more: Dozier leads American League second basemen in fielding with a near-perfect .995 fielding percentage. He had made only two errors in 72 games. He has helped turn a league-leading 54 double plays.
He’s an all-star, plain and simple.
Except, he’s not.
All-Star fan voting ends Thursday. Dozier ranks sixth in voting among American League second basemen. Sixth!
It’s more ridiculous than that. Omar Infante, the Kansas City second baseman who leads the voting, bats .236 and hasn’t hit a home run. Dozier has 41 extra base hits, Infante 18. Infante has made twice as many errors. I could go on, but you see, don’t you?
This is what you get when you allow the fans, totally, to decide who plays in all-star games.
Absurd.
I mean, there are essentially two goals in baseball: Score runs and keep the other team from scoring. Among second basemen, Dozier leads the league both in producing runs and in keeping the other team from scoring.
Major League fan voting is done on-line. It’s enough to make you wonder whether (1) all computers have crashed in Minnesota; or (2) if somebody in Kansas City has hacked the system.
Kansas City Royals lead at seven of the nine positions.
You could make a case for the Indians’ Kipnis, who hits a robust .351 and, as Dozier, has made only two errors. But the power difference between the two is vast. Dozier has tripled Kipnis in home runs and produced 94 runs (scored and batted in) to Kipnis’ 80.
Without question, Dozier and Kipnis should be the two American League all-star second basemen, and that’s saying something because the AL has some great ones (see also Dustin Pedroia and Robinson Cano).
If you know Dozier — as good-natured and team-oriented as they come — you know he’s not making a big deal out of all this. He’d probably enjoy a few days back in Mississippi at all-star break. But, competitor that he is, you know also he’d love to be in Cincinnati on July 14.
Here’s what Dozier told Minnesota reporters last week:
“Obviously I know what’s going on, because it’s out there nowadays. So it’s hard not to pay attention to it. But I really don’t. I always said it’d be awesome to have that, that you’ve made one or whatever and represent the Twins, all that kind of stuff. I know it sounds kind of weird, but I really don’t play for anything like that.”
There is no perfect way to pick all-star teams. When the players did it, they played favorites. The same probably would be true if you allowed the managers to do it. Perhaps they could come up with some combination of players, fans and managers.
Or, maybe, just maybe, they’d be better off letting the beat reporters in each Major League Baseball city do the voting. They see all the players. They are, by job description, supposed to be impartial.
Clearly, anything is better than what we now have, which is a bad joke.
Rick Cleveland (rcleveland@msfame.com) is executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.
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