2015 MLB: Who Should Start for the NL in The All-Star Game?

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said he is willing to look into the voting process by which fans choose the All-Star starters for the American and National Leagues, now that the Kansas City Royals have 7 of the 8 non-pitching starting positions at this point in the voting. It is true that the Royals did win the American League pennant last year, but many of the players that the Royals fans have voted in shouldn’t be starting at their positions. Eric Hosmer over Miguel Cabrera at first? Really? And that’s just one example. Royals manager Ned Yost has suggested that fans who don’t like the current results should get out and vote themselves – each MLB betting fan can vote up to 35 times, after all.

2015 MLB Betting: Who Should Start for the NL in The All-Star Game?

    In the National League, though, matters are going much more true to form. The St. Louis Cardinals are running away with things in the National League Central and also have the best record in the entire league, but they only have three of the nine starting positions filled. At shortstop, it’s difficult to argue with Jhonny Peralta from the Cards starting, and he leads the Giants’ Brandon Crawford by about 1.2 million votes at this point. Peralta has the stellar defensive numbers, and he still hits fairly well for shortstop – a position out of whom managers generally don’t expect much offense at all. At catcher, the Cardinals’ Yadier Molina trails leading vote-getter Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants by about 400,000 votes. Posey has been one of the strongest links in the Giants’ recent run of World Series titles (three in five years), and so his place atop the vote-getters is legitimate. However, Posey isn’t relying on his laurels to get him into the game, with a strong offensive season up to this point as well, along with his usual hard work behind the plate. At third base, it would be fun to see Cubs’ phenom Kris Bryant start an All-Star game in his first year. After all, he has shown up this spring and simply taken National League pitching apart. The fact that the Cubs started him in the minors appears to have been more a way to manage his service time from accruing as quickly in the big leagues than as a reflection on his ability. However, Matt Carpenter – once again having a monster season for the Cards – leads this position convincingly. Bryant may be the only Cub named to the team, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be starting. Dee Gordon of the Marlins leads all other NL second basemen with almost 3.5 million votes. The Marlins haven’t had many bright spots this season, other than the moon shots that Giancarlo Stanton tends to launch into the sky, but Gordon’s play has been outstanding. The Cards’ Kolten Wong is only about 300,000 votes behind Gordon, but Gordon should be the one to start. At first base, Adrian Gonzalez for the Dodgers has had a strong season, but he remains about 600,000 votes behind Arizona’s Paul Goldschmidt. In the outfield, it’s hard to argue with the top three of Bryce Harper (Washington), Matt Holliday (St. Louis) and Nori Aoki (Giants), but it would be fun to see either Giancarlo Stanton or Andrew McCutchen (Pittsburgh) make it into the top three. Stanton has the better shot, sitting only about 70,000 votes behind Aoki. Sources: ESPN.com: http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/31015/matt-carpenter Baseball-reference.com: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/peraljh01.shtml