Three Dodgers made the All-Star game: Corey Seager, Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen. This is OK with me. Seager is the best shortstop in baseball and has been hitting nearly .400 with power for two months now. Jansen is now officially the greatest closer in team history, having passed Eric Gagne and Kershaw is the greatest period. Unfortunately, he just went on the DL, so he will miss the All-Star game...
IMO Seager should be be the starting NL SS and Russell the reserve. There's no question that Kershaw is the best SP in the game. Too bad he's hurt. The game is better when he's healthy, even if he pitches against my team. How often in this era do you watch a game just to see the SP?
Cubs with 5 starters! Only the 2nd team in MLB history to have their entire infield start an All-Star game, the last team to do that...1963 St. Louis Cardinals, before AJ's time! Theo Epstein aquired 9 of the 17 starters ...The 5 Cubs and 4 of the Red Sox. I'd say the man knows baseball. Cubs hit a homerun when they hired Theo. Almost the All Star break and some of the races are tightening up. Cards and Dodgers have made up some ground in their divisions, the Astros have dug themselves out of the cellar and if they can continue to play like they have recently they might make the playoffs after all, something that looked extremely unlikely at the end of April. Rangers, Giants, Cubs, Indians have all had good first halves and have solid leads esp the Cubs, Rangers and Indians. But baseball is a marathon and big leads can evaporate in less than a month. More than a few teams have looked like sure things till Sept rolled around and they faltered. I don't think he's the best player in baseball, maybe Mike Trout, Bryce Harper can claim that, but Jose Altuve is having a MVP 1st half of the season.
Looked up those '63 Cardinals. Turns out that the whole infield started because Mazeroski was injured and Julian Javier started in his place. Ken Boyer ---3b Dick Groat ---SS Julian Javier ---2b Bill White---1b Stan Musial was a reserve and on his 24th All-Star game. The name that shocked me as being on that team was Duke Snider playing then for the Mets was in his 8th All-Star game. I think there might have been a rule back then that each team had to have 1 player on the team. Because I thought Duke was washed up when he left L.A. BTW Duke Snider was my original baseball hero.