NL All-Star team ... uh, can we try this again?

The National League All-Star team playing Tuesday night in Kansas City is, at least measured by WAR, not very good. In fact, if we were to pick a team of NL WAR Stars and compare it with the real team of NL All-Stars, we would end up with only ten players in common.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Our task here is to produce a National League 25-man All-Star team based on WAR (wins above a replacement-level player) as calculated by baseball-reference.com.

We'll jump right into it. For a rationale about why this might be worth doing, as well as the American League version of our WAR All-Star teams, check here.

To begin, we will make up a 25-man National League All-Star team based mainly on WAR, deviating only to fill every starting position and make sure each team is represented by at least one player. After that, we will add five players (three position players and two pitchers) for a 30-man roster, then four more players for a 34-man roster, which brings us up to the roster length that will be in action Tuesday night in Kansas City.

Here is the 10-man pitching staff for the 25-man NL WAR team. The pitcher's WAR so far in 2012 follows his name:

Johnny Cueto, Cincinnati (3.6), R.A. Dickey, New York (3.6), Jordan Zimmerman, Washington (3.1), Mark Buehrle, Miami (2.9), James McDonald, Pittsburgh (2.8), Gio Gonzalez, Washington (2.7), Ryan Vogelsong, San Francisco (2.7), Matt Belisle, Colorado (2.6), Ryan Dempster (2.6), and Kyle Lohse, St. Louis (2.6).

Unlike the American League, for which the starting pitchers on the real All-Star team lock step with WAR all the way through, the NL pitching staff diverges widely from a staff that would be picked by WAR.

The most glaring example is Cueto, tied with Dickey as the NL's best pitcher this year by WAR. Retired St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, managing the NL All-Stars, left Cueto completely off the All-Star team, which can only be described as a farcical, petty omission. It goes back to the rivalry between the Cardinals and the Reds, which has gotten nasty through the years. This move by LaRussa, snubbing a foe like this after retirement, shows just how nasty that rivalry turned.

But maybe we're too harsh here, because Cueto isn't the only WAR warrior left off the team in Kansas City. Indeed, it you believe and support WAR (what a terrible acronym), then you are fuming about this NL All-Star pitching staff going to Kansas City, because it is terrible. The NL has included only one of its top 10 pitchers by WAR, which would be Dickey. Further down the list, we find only six of the top 20. So, we have a very low performing All-Star pitching staff relative to the right now.

Now watch them throw a combined no-hitter against the American League in Kansas City.

Here, now, is the starting lineup, and the batting order, for the NL WAR Stars:

Leading off is our right fielder, Atlanta outfielder Michael Bourn (3.9), fifth in NL WAR among position players. Following Bourn is Pittsburgh center fielder Andrew McCutchen, third in the league with his 4.4 WAR. Batting third is the great Cincinnati first baseman Joey Votto, second in the league at 4.5. Cleaning up for the NL is New York third baseman David Wright, who leads the NL at 4.7 WAR.

Whew. And this lineup doesn't quit. Batting fifth is the reigning NL MVP and the most booed player in the game right now, Milwaukee left fielder Ryan Braun, eighth in the NL at 3.6. The No. 6 batter is the designated hitter, St. Louis left fielder Matt Holliday, sixth in the NL at 3.7. Batting seventh is Philadelphia catcher Carlos Ruiz, fourth in the NL at 4.0. The No. 8 hitter is Chicago shortstop Starlin Castro, 11th in the NL at 3.0. And the No. 9 hitter, Chicago second baseman Darwin Barney, seventh in the league at 3.6.

Surprising, eh? Who would have thought that the last-place Chicago Cubs could put three players just on the WAR pitching staff and starting lineup? That's an awful lot of talent for such a terrible team. It tells us that Cubs general manager Theo Epstein has a nice building block in his double-play combination, and that he has an awful lot more work to do.

And what a great batting order. Sadly, that is not the batting order, or even the lineup, that will appear for the NL in Kansas City. Among the players in our lineup, the fans selected only Votto. Then, the NL decision makers initially left Bourn, Holliday and Barney off the real NL All-Star team completely. Bourn and Holliday have since been added as replacement players, but Barney has not.

As we fill out the 25-man NL team with reserves, we will pass over some better players by WAR because we need to represent every club. The list here includes are San Francisco outfielder Melky Cabrera (ninth among NL hitters at 3.4), St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina (2.9, 13th), Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis (2.4, 17th), San Diego third baseman Chase Headley (2.3, tied for 18th), Arizona first baseman Paul Goldschmidt (2.2, tied for 20th) and Houston shortstop Jed Lowrie (2.1, tied for 25th).

There, we have it, our best 25-man NL team by WAR, complete with three catchers and at least one player from every team. None of our WAR reserves was named to the real NL All-Star team. Thus, out of 25 players on the NL WAR stars, only eight are on the real NL 34-man All-Star team.

Adding five more players for a 30-man roster, we start with two outfielders, Atlanta's Martin Prado (3.2) and Miami's Giancarlo Stanton (3.0). We should add an infielder to this mix, and now comes a hard case. Atlanta rookie shortstop Andrelton Simmons has played in only 33 games, and we should rightly argue that 33 games isn't enough to make an All-Star team. But his production is off the charts. Much as we ooh and ahh about the Angels' Mike Trout and his 4.6 WAR in 64 games, Simmons is sitting on 2.5 WAR in 33 games. Going by WAR, we have to include Simmons. The two additional pitchers are Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers and Matt Cain of the Giants, who are tied for 11th among NL pitchers at 2.4 WAR.

Kershaw, Cain and Stanton all were named to the real NL All-Star team, but Simmons and Prado were not. Stanton has since been scratched due to injury.

Four more players get us to 34. Going down the list, we pick Carlos Beltran of St. Louis and Jason Heyward of Atlanta, both tied for 14th in the NL with Simmons at 2.5. The additional pitchers are Washington's Stephen Strasburg and Milwaukee’s Zack Greinke at 2.4 WAR, tied with Cain and Kershaw. Beltran is in the real NL starting lineup, Strasburg is on the real NL staff, and Heyward isn't on the real team at all.

The real originally named NL All-Star team and the 34-man NL WAR team have only 10 players in common -- Votto, Beltran, Cain, Dickey, Kershaw, Strasburg, Bourn, Braun, Castro and Cabrara. Add in Holliday, a replacement, and it gets up to 11.

Rather amazing how much disparity we have, even as the new metrics have crept into the front offices, between what the real NL roster says and what WAR says. 

The real NL roster includes four relief pitchers -- Cincinnati's Aroldis Chapman, Atlanta's Craig Kimbrel, Colorado's Houston Street and Pittsburgh's Joel Hanrahan -- with a combined WAR of 4.9. Again, managers love relief specialists, and WAR does not.

The rest of the real NL team, according to WAR, includes such howlers as Chicago's Bryan LaHair and San Francisco's Pablo Sandoval, both wandering around at 0.9 WAR. Other real NL All-Stars include such weak WARriors as Rafael Furcal of the Cardinals (1.1) and Cincinnati's Jay Bruce (1.3).

The combined WAR for the NL WAR Stars is 103.3. The combined WAR for the real NL All-Star team is 70.2. Naturally, we should expect a team selected on the basis of WAR to have a higher WAR than a team that isn't. But the difference here is hard to swallow. We're looking at a difference of 30 games in a period of a half season.

Somebody didn't pick the right team here. If WAR didn't pick the right team, it means WAR is deeply flawed. If the fans and LaRussa didn't pick the right team, then they are, at least in this respect.

Our hunch is that the NL team playing in Kansas City Tuesday night  isn't nearly as good as it could be. Then again, neither is the AL team.

AL All-Star team not quite ready for WAR

The American League All-Star team playing in Kansas City Tuesday contains great names like Derek Jeter and Prince Fielder. However, according to the WAR metric, neither of these players should be anywhere near the All-Star Game. Indeed, about half of the AL team shouldn't be there, according to WAR.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

It's the time of year when vigorous arguments about who should be named to the All-Star teams are in season. That will pass in a couple days.

Today, the All-Star rosters are blown all the way up to 34 players each. A little much, we say. An All-Star team should be the size of a team, which is 25 players.

What's more interesting, though, is who gets selected and why, which raises the old questions. Should the All-Star game be contested among players who are the best so far this year? Or, should the All-Star game be about "stars," which favors players who are enormously popular even if they're not great this year?

We usually end up with teams that answer those questions affirmatively and negatively at the same time. A mixture, if you will. That is, the teams never definitively satisfy anybody.

Our preference here is to have the best players going at the present moment. It helps to summarize the season up to this point, and it also gives us a very clear picture about who really are the top performers right now.

The keepers of the baseball statistics, tireless in search of a single number to measure a player's entire contribution, have come upon several candidates. The most popular, at the moment, is WAR (wins above a replacement-level player). We have used WAR on these pages before, in evaluating the 21st century drafts for the Angels and the Dodgers. We're not entirely sold on WAR, but it raises interesting questions about players when we put questions to it.

Here's an interesting question: How would our All-Star teams look, right now, if they were based almost entirely on WAR? That is, only the players with the highest WARs this year are on the teams. If we use that as the guiding principle, adjusting to the requirements that each position be filled and each team represented, we end up with rosters that only halfway resemble the rosters that will play Tuesday night in Kansas City.

First, we shall use WAR, as calculated on baseball-reference.com, to name 25-man rosters with 15 position players and 10 pitchers each. Next, we will add three hitters and two pitchers for 30-man rosters, then we will add two more hitters and two more pitchers each for 34-man rosters.

In this piece, we look at the American League. For a look at the National League, check here.

Here, now, is the American League pitching staff, chosen by WAR ranking:

Justin Verlander, Detroit (4.3), Chris Sale, Chicago (4.2), Jake Peavy, Chicago (4.1), Matt Harrison, Texas (3.7), Jered Weaver, Angels (2.9), David Price, Tampa Bay (2.7), Hiroki Kuroda, New York (2.6), Jose Quintana, Chicago (2.6), Jim Johnson, Baltimore (2.4), Felix Hernandez, Seattle (1.9).

The first nine pitchers listed are one through nine in the WAR rankings among AL pitchers at the All-Star break. Baltimore's Jason Hammel also has a 2.4 WAR, as does the Angels' C.J. Wilson. But we needed to place a Seattle Mariners player on the All-Star squad and King Felix is their top performer this year at 1.9.

Here, now, is the starting lineup, and the batting order, for the American League WAR Stars:

Leading off in center field is Mike Trout, who has been with the Angels barely more than two months and already has 4.6 WAR, second in the league. He might have to settle for Rookie of the Year, but he should get a legitimate shot at MVP if he keeps this up. Batting second at second base is Robinson Cano of the Yankees, who is third in AL batter WAR at 4.2.

Batting third is Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer. One of the interesting findings in this little study is how much more talent the National League has over the American League when it comes to catchers, particularly on offense. The NL WAR rankings list four catchers among the top 17 batters, and six catchers among the top 28. To find a catcher for the American League, we have to go all the way down to No. 28, where we find Mauer with his 2.1 WAR. At that, Mauer is only a half-time catcher right now -- 37 starts behind the plate, 23 at first base and 14 at designated hitter.

Cleaning up is the designated hitter, Boston's David Ortiz. He's still the Red Sox best hitter with a 2.5 WAR, which ranks 19th in the league. Batting fifth is a really nice player, Oakland right fielder Josh Reddick, running fourth in the league with a 3.6 WAR. The A's picked him up from Boston last winter for Andrew Bailey and Ryan Sweeney.

The No. 6 hitter is Detroit's Austin Jackson, who will play left but regularly plays center. His 3.5 WAR ranks fifth among AL hitters. The seventh hitter, believe it or not, is Toronto first baseman Edwin Encarnacion, who's 3.0 WAR is tied for ninth among AL hitters. Encarnacion is really a DH, but he took 37 starts at first base while Adam Lind missed six weeks, so he qualifies. Remarkably, Encarnacion is way ahead of people like Mark Teixeira and Albert Pujols.

At the bottom of the AL order, we have some defense. The shortstop with the best WAR in the AL is Tampa Bay's Sean Rodriguez, the former Angels farm hand. Rodriguez has a 2.2 WAR, 2.1 of which is for his defense. He bats eighth. Finally, batting ninth, we have Brett Lawrie, the Toronto third baseman who's 5.0 WAR leads all of the American League. Of that WAR, 3.7 is defensively earned. Ever heard of Brett Lawrie? According to WAR, he's the most valuable player in the American League.

Compare this with the real AL starting lineup. The real lineup has five players -- Texas catcher Mike Napoli, Detroit first baseman Prince Fielder, Texas third baseman Adrian Beltre, New York shortstop Derek Jeter and New York center fielder Curtis Granderson -- who don't even make our 34-man AL WAR team. Jeter is clearly a lifetime achievement selection. If he hangs around for another six or seven years, he can be the new Hit King. However, his 0.7 WAR is tied for 86th in the AL with, among others, the great Drew Butera and Lou Marson.

For that matter, our WAR starting lineup includes five players -- Reddick, Jackson, Encarnacion, Rodriguez and Lawrie -- who aren't on the real AL All-Star team at all. That group only includes three of the top five AL players by WAR this year.

Here are the reserves for the 25-man AL WAR squad: Baltimore catcher Matt Wieters (1.7), Cleveland second baseman Jason Kipnis (3.4), Texas outfielder Josh Hamilton (3.2), Cleveland outfielder Shin-Soo Choo (3.0), Chicago outfielder Alex Rios (2.9), and Kansas City outfielder Alex Gordon (2.8).

You might notice that we have only two catchers and believe it really should be three, just in case. If so, then we add Chicago's A.J. Pierzynski, who is all the way down at 47th in AL WAR at 1.5. The player we subtract is Rios, who does have a higher WAR than Gordon. However, we have to keep Gordon because he is our only Royals player.

That's the 25-man AL team, according to WAR. Four of these reserves -- Kipnis, Shin-Soo, Rios/Pierzynski and Gordon -- aren't even on the 34-man real AL team.

Now, we build up to a 30-man team. Assuming we decided to have three catchers on the 25-man team, we now add Rios back in, along with four other players. One of them is Detroit third baseman Miguel Cabrera (3.1). For another, we can pick between Toronto's Jose Bautista and the Angels' Mark Trumbo, who are tied for 11th, with Rios, among AL hitters at 2.9. We'll pick Bautista because he has been doing it longer. Bautista is a starter in the real All-Star Game, but he barely makes the 30-man roster here. The additional pitchers are Hammel and Wilson, who barely missed the 25-man cut. Neither Hammel nor Rios made the real AL All-Star team.

Now, by adding four more players, we get to 34, the same roster size as the real All-Star team. Now, Trumbo makes the team for sure. Kansas City third baseman Mike Moustakas and Seattle shortstop Brendan Ryan, are tied for 15th among AL position players at 2.7 WAR. We're taking Ryan because we like the way he wears the clothes. All of Ryan's WAR is on defense. The added pitchers are Texas right hander Yu Darvish and Oakland right hander Brandon McCarthy, who are tied for 12th among AL pitchers with a 2.3 WAR.

A full 16 players who made the real AL All-Star team do not qualify for the 34-man WAR team. Four of them are relief pitchers -- Ryan Cook of Oakland, Joe Nathan of Texas, Chris Perez of Cleveland, and Tampa Bay's Fernando Rodney. Their combined WAR is 5.4, which means four relief pitchers between them are just a game better than Verlander by himself. Perez has a war of 0.4, ranking 103rd among AL pitchers.

Obviously, big league managers regard relief closers much more highly than does WAR. So do the general imperatives to put on a spectacle. A relief closer is a star, which is a lot different from being a producer.

Among the reserves, the players who made the real AL All-Star team and not the 34-man AL WAR team are Elvis Andrus and Ian Kinsler of Texas, Adam Dunn and Paul Konerko of Chicago, Billy Butler of Kansas City, Asdrubal Cabrera of Cleveland and Adam Jones of Baltimore. According to WAR, Dunn (0.8) and Butler (0.9) don't belong anywhere near the All-Star Game. Kinsler (1.1) isn't much better.

A rather dramatic contrast emerges between the real All-Star teams and the WAR rankings, obviously. Six of the top 10 AL position players by WAR aren't even on the real All-Star team. Players like Lawrie and Kipnis, who have no national profile, are quietly among the league's best players. Likewise, Shin-Soo and Encarnacion, top ten AL players by WAR this year, are not on the All-Star team.

Of the top 20 AL position players by WAR, only eight are playing Tuesday night in Kansas City. Our version of a 34-man team has 17 of those top 20 -- missing three because we had to dip down to find three catchers.

The moral of the story? The All-Star Game is about perception. Baseball people often like to say that perception is reality. WAR advocates would have to disagree. Strongly.

And if you believe WAR, then you believe the team we have named here is better than the AL team playing Tuesday in Kansas City. Do you?

Interleague play, wild card playoffs must go

During these last several years of interleague play and wild card playoffs, Major League Baseball has profited as never before. But they still present problems. The commissioner's office has papered over some of them. But it would be better if interleague play and wild card playoffs went away completely.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

When interleague play began in 1997, the voices from this corner spoke in complete opposition. Baseball is trading off its soul, we said. Baseball is selling its mystique, which it can never regain.

Such remarks must have sounded crotchety. The game is its own soul and mystique, beyond harm from wise men or fools. Interleague play, home run proliferation and wild card playoffs can't kill baseball's soul. But they can't help, we said, and they might even hurt. If they don't kill the game's soul, they will somehow diminish the game by wrecking decades-old standards of performance and competition. And we were right for lamenting our loss of those unities. But we were wrong for thinking it was feasible to preserve them.

Recall the situation about 1997. Fans were not coming back after the club owners forced a players' strike that cancelled the 1994 World Series. Well, we said, of course people are ticked off. Let them be ticked off for two or three years. The game will bring them back. Let the game take care of it.

But for whatever reasons -- bats, balls, dilution of pitching, smaller new parks, steroids -- home runs already were flying in numbers that sold tickets while makinhg the game uncomfortable to watch. And Commissioner Bud Selig long wanted interleague play. Delayed by the strike, wild card playoffs began in 1995. So, all of that hit at once, all these gimmicks tearing into the game's venerated unities, which had directly brought the game's present and history together for older fans.

But even we understand, by now, that the unities were an illusion, by then. The game's business increasingly nationalized with big network television contracts, later to go with pooled Internet and cable revenues. Meanwhile, local franchises are increasingly sophisticated at monetizing their markets. As all the business could be conducted by the commissioner's office and the clubs, the National and American Leagues ceased to have competing interests beyond winning the All-Star Game or the World Series. In the interests of uniformity and efficiency, the commissioner folded the two leagues into his office in 1999. We no longer have autonomous presidents or umpires for the American or National Leagues.

Thus, the American and National Leagues were on their way out when interleague play began and they no longer exist except as branding names owned by Major League Baseball. So, there really is no interleague play because there are no separate leagues, in any real sense, to play against each other. The reductio ad absurdum came with the 2002 All-Star Game played to an 11-inning tie in Milwaukee, Bud Selig's town. The insiders, the participants, didn't even care to resolve the All-Star Game. There was no Chub Feeney walking into the clubhouse and giving a speech for the good old National League. The commissioner has since papered over the difficulty with an incentive, giving the winning league home field in the World Series.

But the World Series began to feel more detached from the regular season as so many teams succeeded in the former without first succeeding in the latter. Wild cards run wild through an October postseason tournament that is little like the regular season. Out of 34 possible pennants since the start of expanded playoffs, wild cards have won nine, leaving the six division winners to average about four each. Wild cards have won five of 17 World Series, leaving the division winners to average two each. The wild cards win their fair share because they enter the tournament as equals, although they really aren’t.

The World Series championship has taken on a fluky quality, as if it were a suitable separate entertainment, but not sufficiently determined by the rigors of the regular season. If you could just back your old, shallow club into a wild card, you're an outlier seizing a crazy opportunity without bearing the burden of winning a regular season championship. And you're winning as much as they are.

The postseason schedule, with its day of rest for every two days of games, plays to the advantage of the weakest overall team, since that team is weakest very likely because it didn't have the depth to capture a division in 162 games. The manager of the weakest team benefits most from not exposing his weaknesses. Now, he can keep his better relievers sharp and keep his worst relievers out of the game. Now, his 36-year-old right fielder doesn't need two days off every week, which takes playing time away from his protégé who is moving too slow.

Thus, the postseason schedule, alone, makes the weaker teams stronger. But we're not testing the best team over the long haul, anyway. We're only testing the moment, the right now. By so often capturing the moment, the wild cards have exposed the moment's lack of connection to the regular season, because the wild cards were absent in that moment. Not even needing to buy a ticket to enter the tournament, the wild card has taken the World Series away from the regular season.

New York Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman admitted to considering the strategic advantages of entering as a wild card with a division title on the line. Winning a regular season championship became secondary to gearing up for the playoffs. We could put it on the Yankees’ unique commitment to winning the World Series, but other teams – Florida 1997 and 2003, the Angels and San Francisco in 2002 – demonstrate it just as well. There are others. Red Sox 2004?

How can we forget the Cardinals 2011? The Cardinals played 18 playoff games in 28 days. Powerful as the players union is, the basic agreement only requires one day off for every three weeks during the regular season. The playoffs are a whole new ball game, as it might be said. And no one understood better than Tony LaRussa how to demiurge a whole new team – a much better team – for that whole new game.

Baseball has a very long regular season with a lot of ticket and marketing inventory. It’s the only chance most franchises have to make money. Baseball needs that regular season to matter a bit more, to have a little more to say about who wins the World Series. It would be good for business. Maybe baseball can accomplish that much and max out the postseason revenues with the new system of two wild cards in a one-game playoff to enter the tournament.

Now, at least, the successful wild card will have to pass some kind of initiation, bear some kind of handicap by burning a starter, jump through some kind of hoop. Win that game and you're the road team in a best-of-five against the best record in your league, and you can only use your ace once. We shouldn't expect to see a wild card win the World Series for quite a while.

Happily, wild card playoffs and interleague play can be eliminated by the application of one exciting idea that also will address Selig's absolutely correct intuitions about regionalism that have driven his various re-alignment schemes. The details will follow soon. It should suffice right now to say that wild card playoffs have produced flukes and interleague play generates too many games that are utterly meaningless. We don't need them.