{"id":13991,"date":"2012-07-01T22:28:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T21:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=13991"},"modified":"2012-07-01T22:26:17","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T21:26:17","slug":"mlb-2012-all-star-rosters-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=13991","title":{"rendered":"MLB 2012 All-Star Rosters Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>MLB announced<\/a> the 2012 All-Star Game rosters on Sunday. This year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mid-Summer Classic will be staged at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, with the festivities starting on 8 July and the All-Star Game itself being played on 10 July (actually the early hours of 11 July for us in the U.K.).<\/p>\n

Fans of the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants did a good job of getting their players into the Classic.<\/p>\n

The Giants picks made the biggest difference on the National League side when looking at Mark George and my ballots<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Buster Posey will don the catching gear at the start of the game (ahead of Mark\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unabashed \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchomer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pick of A.J. Ellis and my selection of Yadier Molina), Pablo Sandoval will be at third (both of us had David Wright at the hot corner on our ballots) and Melky Cabrera in the outfield.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Rafael Furcal will start at shortstop (Mark went for Jed Lowrie, while I took a flyer on Starlin Castro, who has made the initial roster as a reserve), while Dan Uggla will be at second base.<\/p>\n

Uggla undoubtedly had a strong case, but both Mark and I went for Brandon Phillips and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a shame for the Reds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 second baseman that he hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t found his way onto the initial roster (I keep writing \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinitial\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 roster as injuries can lead to players pulling out, as we saw last year). Phillips would have provided a better chance of seeing a dazzling fielding play, although Uggla has made a memorable impact with the glove in a previous All-Star Game. Sadly for him, it was his three error nightmare in 2008, no doubt something he will be reminded about more than a few times leading up to the game.<\/p>\n

As for the American League starters, Mike Napoli got the Texas treatment ahead of A.J. Pierzynski and Joe Mauer. Prince Fielder gets in ahead of Paul Konerko, Derek Jeter unsurprisingly will start at short ahead of Elvis Andrus (if he decides to turn up this year) and Curtis Granderson takes one of the three starting outfield spots, with few begrudging Grandy a place in the starting lineup, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure.<\/p>\n

Both Mark and I used the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwrite in\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 section to put Mike Trout on our ballots and he has made the roster as reserve, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll stand by my prediction that he will do something memorable in the latter innings of the game.<\/p>\n

Trout\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name keeps being linked with the other young rookie star in the making, Bryce Harper, and the Nationals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 outfielder is one of five players that has been put up for the National League\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Final Vote. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of interest in Harper which will certainly help his cause; however I would guess that Chipper Jones will get the sentimental vote in his final season.<\/p>\n

With my A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cap on, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pleased for Ryan Cook to make it as Oakland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s representative in his rookie season, although Josh Reddick would have been a worthy selection too. He shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel too hard done by: when it gets to that stage of the roster setting, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more about what pieces the manager needs to fill in than who is necessarily the person who deserves it the most.<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s normally at least one non-selection that causes some controversy each year and it appears as though National League manager Tony La Russa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision not to select the Reds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Johnny Cueto takes that prize in 2012. La Russa had several options to round out his pitching staff so there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very logical argument to counter the claim that Cueto has been deliberately snubbed.<\/p>\n

Mind you, if a manager was going to hold a grudge against a player, it probably would be against someone who helped end the career of one of his former players – Jason LaRue -\u00c2\u00a0by kicking him in the head during a bench-clearing brawl.<\/p>\n

If La Russa does hold a grudge against Cueto, and frankly I wouldn’t put it past him, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you could call it a petty one.<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an article linked to on Jason LaRue\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wikipedia entry<\/a> entitled “Jason LaRue May Be Out For Season After Johnny Cueto’s uncalled for Kick to the Head”. I can understand what the author meant, but the wording used made me chuckle, raising as it does the possibility that there might have been a plausible circumstance on the field where Cueto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kung-fu act would have been considered \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccalled for\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, which seems just a tad unlikely to me).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MLB announced the 2012 All-Star Game rosters on Sunday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32,553],"class_list":["post-13991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-all-star-game","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13991"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13996,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13991\/revisions\/13996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}