In completely unsurprising news, the Astros don't have a player on the leaderboards in All-Star voting for 2013. There are a couple of notable omissions that we - collectively - would like to point out:
Catcher
Jason Castro. Castro is hitting .282/.335/.486 with 43K:31BB. His .821 OPS is behind Joe Mauer (.907) and Carlos Santana (.879) among qualified AL catchers. Yet Castro is not among the top five catchers in terms of voting. Mauer, understandably, leads the way. Matt Wieters is 2nd, then Carlos Santana, then...A.J. Pierzynski and Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
Pierzynski is hitting .286/.319/.421 with 4HR and five walks. His 0.6 WAR is 1.3 behind Jason Castro's 1.9 WAR. Saltalamacchia is hitting .257/.329/.453 with five homers and 57 strikeouts in 148 ABs, and Saltalamacchia has a 0.4 WAR for the season. Castro's 1.9 WAR is second only to Mauer (2.7) among AL catchers. Of course, Pierzynski and Saltalamacchia play for good teams, so we shouldn't be surprised.
Second base
Robinson Cano leads the way in voting, with almost double the number of votes than the 2nd place Ian Kinsler. Dustin Pedroia, Omar Infante, and Brian Roberts round out the top five in All-Star voting.
I have no problem with Cano, Kinsler and Pedroia in the top three (even though Pedroia has 3.4 WAR, to 2.1 WAR for Cano, and 1.9 for Kinsler) - those are the top three in 2B WAR. I can also understand Infante on the list. But Brian Roberts? Brian Roberts has played in three games. He was injured in the third game of the season, and is currently on the 60-Day DL. He might be able to play by the end of the month. Yet Brian Roberts has 291,756 votes.
The point of this isn't to say that Altuve should be the starting 2B on the AL All-Star team. He's not there yet. But the voting for this process is absolutely ridiculous.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
