(The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are some interesting facts over at Biz of Baseball about this year's MLB All-Star game. The numbers about bonuses being paid players (especially the $500K Derek Jeter is pocketing for making the game, despite backing out of playing in it) are quite telling. But we'd like to focus on the record 84 players who (so far) have been named to play in the game, accounting for the original selections and all the replacements for the 16 players who were named to the teams but won't be active.
Eighty-four!
Look at it this way: There are 750 MLB players active (25 players per team, 30 teams). Sure, a few of the ASG pullouts are on the DL and thus not on active rosters right now, but if we take 84 all-stars out of 750 players, it means 11.2 percent of players -- one of every nine -- were All-Stars this year.
That picture? Craig Kimbrel, Braves. He's an All-Star!
The “sticky” ball that coach Chris Finch so deplores showed up for the first game, after a preseason when offense happened smoothly. On defense, “resistance” was missing, the coach said.
