2011 MLB All Star Game: The Curious Case of the Popular Vote

On Sunday, the rosters for the 2011 MLB All-Star Game were announced. Aside from a few notable head-scratchers, the fans did a very good job of getting it right. The players that have done their part to earn starting spots got them, so I think we all deserve a round of applause.

But then there were those head-scratchers. The one that stands out the most is Derek Jeter. Despite the fact I love him just as much as any other baseball fan, Jeter getting the nod as the starting shortstop in the American League fairly boggles the mind. He may be the possessor of a Hall of Fame career, but his 2011 season has not been one for the books.

There is no hiding the fact that the only reason he is going to be the AL's starting shortstop is because he is the perennial winner of baseball's popularity contest.

This is outrageous, but it I have to admit that it would have been very strange to see Jeter slip in the voting. After all these years, such a fate is actually rather incomprehensible.

Or is it? After all, Jeter may have avoided a sudden fall from grace, but he is the exception to the rule this year.

For example, let's take a look at Ichiro Suzuki and Albert Pujols. Like Jeter, the two of them are not only popular, but universally beloved. Unlike Jeter, Ichiro and Pujols will not be headed to Arizona for this year's Midsummer Classic. Alas, they missed the cut.

According to the final voting tallies, Ichiro finished seventh among American League outfielders with 2,528,532 votes. That put him nearly 200,000 votes behind Nelson Cruz for the sixth spot, and nearly five million votes behind leading vote-getter Jose Bautista.

Pujols did a little better in the National League voting, as he finished third among NL first basemen with 4,171,094 votes. Reining NL MVP Joey Votto edged him by a little over 80,000 votes, and Prince Fielder led the pack with 4,864,523 votes.

End result: Ichiro will be missing out on the all-star game for the first time in his decade-long career, and Pujols will be missing out for the first time since 2002.

Because these two players have become all-star mainstays in the last decade, the harsh reality of them watching the game from home begs a very simple question: What gives?

Well, the most obvious reason Ichiro and Pujols will (presumably) not be at Chase Field next week is because both of them are having off years. A career .331 hitter heading into this season, Ichiro is batting just .272 in 2011. The first 10 years of Pujols' career consisted of something like a .330 average, 40 home runs and 125 RBI, and he was hitting just .279 with 17 and 45 before he went on the disabled list with a broken wrist.

This may be the case, but how come Jeter's own bad year didn't scare away voters? He was only hitting .260 with two homers and 20 RBIs before he went on the DL, and his 0.5 WAR suggests he is one of the least valuable shortstops in all of baseball. It was pretty easy to tell that he is no all-star.

Obviously, the one thing you can point out is that Jeter has legions upon legions of Yankee fans stuffing the ballot box in his favor. They may be loyal to a fault, but I guess you can't get angry at Yankees fans for sticking by their guy (though, admittedly, I have done just that).

This is true, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that Ichiro has an entire country of adoring fans pulling for him at any given moment. This is a big reason why he led the majors in all-star voting in each of his first three years in the bigs.

To a somewhat lesser extent, Pujols also has a country behind him, as he is quite the hero in the Dominican Republic. Even if you look beyond the nationality argument, the point remains that we're talking about two players who are basically baseball demigods.

So once again, what gives? Is this a mere sign of inconsistency on the part of the baseball-loving public, or is this a tell-tale sign that Major League Baseball's ever-lasting popularity contest is undergoing a kind of paradigm shift?

Honestly, I don't have an answer to this question. My gut tells me that this is a simple matter of two players losing favor because of off years, which I certainly hope is the case. It would be a good indicator that baseball fans are not all that ignorant, an idea that brings a smile to this baseball junkie's face.

Then again, who knows? David Halberstam once wrote that baseball is the one sport in which illusion and reality are farthest apart. There are always going to be other forces at work in baseball, and I don't suspect I will ever figure out what they are or what they're doing.

All we can really do, I guess, is enjoy the game.