We are beginning to wonder who the hell writes the headlines for the stories at DevilRays.com. We hope for Dawn Klemish’s sake, it is not the same person that writes the articles. After this latest diaper filled with Indian poop, we are not even sure it is somebody that knows anything about baseball.
Yesterday Dawn Klemish of DevilRays.com wrote a story about the All-Star game voting that ran with the title “Speedsters in All-star Game hunt“. And just to make sure we didn’t confuse Carl Crawford and BJ Upton with other “speedsters” like Jose Reyes and Benji Molina they added the sub-headline “Crawford, Upton need help though to go to San Francisco“.
We haven’t been paying attention to the vote totals, but we can tell you that the only way Crawford and Upton are getting to San Francisco is to buy their own coach ticket and scalp tickets outside of PacBell Park like the rest of us. We don’t need to look at the vote totals because the voting is a popularity test and Devil Rays players are about as popular as a rectal exam. And even if all 632 Devil Rays fans voted their allotted 25 times, Crawford and Upton still wouldn’t even be able to see first place.
Having not yet read the article, nor have we looked at any of the voting, let us now calculate exactly how much “help” Crawford and Upton need with THREE DAYS LEFT TO VOTE…
| AL Second Basemen | Team | Total Votes | ||
| P. Palanco | DET | 1,269,717 | ||
| R. Cano | NYY | 965,712 | ||
| D. Pedroia | BOS | 585,544 | ||
| L. Castillo | MIN | 529,031 | ||
| BJ Upton | TB | 490,389 |
| AL Outfielders | Team | Total Votes | ||
| V. Guerrero | ANA | 2,043,824 | ||
| M. Ordonez | DET | 1,445,899 | ||
| I. Suzuki | SEA | 1,409,762 | ||
| M. Ramirez | BOS | 1,386,522 | ||
| T. Hunter | MIN | 1,085,445 | ||
| G. Sheffield | DET | 957,823 | ||
| G. Sizemore | CLE | 802,752 | ||
| B. Abreu | NYY | 746,290 | ||
| J. Damon | NYY | 708,877 | ||
| H. Matsui | NYY | 666,546 | ||
| JD Drew | BOS | 640,889 | ||
| C. Crisp | BOS | 559,339 | ||
| S. Sosa | TEX | 515,440 | ||
| C. Crawford | TB | 434,507 |
All-star voting began on April 23. In the first 62 days of voting, Upton and Crawford managed to pick up less than 500,000 votes each. In order to be voted onto the AL All-star team, Upton will need to find another 800,000 votes in the next 3 days while Crawford will need more than 1.5 million. Of course, then they will only win the voting if nobody else receives any votes in the next three days.
But hey, Crawfor
d and Upton are “in the hunt”.
In defense of Klemish, she really does not imply at any point in the article that Crawford and Upton have any shot at being voted to the All-Star team, although she did add this tidbit…
Upton is back in fifth place in a close battle for the second-base spot on the All-Star roster that’s led by Detroit’s Placido Polanco.
The only truth to that statement is that Upton is in 5th place, and Polanco leads the voting. There is no “close battle” and Upton certainly is not part of it.
Could Upton and Crawford still be named to the All-Star team as reserves? Certainly, but not likely. The managers of each squad have much more flexibility when it comes to the pitching staff then they do with the position players. James Shields has probably pitched his way out of consideration, which leaves Al Reyes as the logical choice to be the Devil Rays lone All-Star representative.
Speedster in All-star Game hunt [DevilRays.com]
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