Major League Baseball All Star Team -- 2008

[catman]

Just for kicks -- as voted by me.
Catcher -- Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins. Mauer won his 2nd batting title in 3 years and had a fielding percentage of .997 (2nd to Chris Snyder of the D'Backs). He threw out 36.3% of potential base stealers.
1B -- Albert Pujols of St. Louis. Little explanation is necessary here. Pujols is a player that comes along once in a generation.
2B -- Dustin Pedroia of Boston. 2nd in the AL in hitting and stole 20 of 21 bases last season. 2nd in baseball in fielding behind Mark Ellis. Could be the AL MVP.
3B -- Like him or not, Alex Rodriguez is still the "class" of the position in baseball. His performance in 2008 was no exception. .302/35/103 with 104 runs scored is outstanding. By the way, he also had the best fielding percentage in the AL.
SS -- Michael Young of the Rangers. Not flashy, but the most solid player at the position in baseball. Offensively and defensively, he is the choice.
LF -- Matt Holliday of the Rockies. Statistically, he gets the nod over Manny (because of fielding) and Braun (because of hitting). Holliday is a guy that you can build a franchise around.
CF -- Ichiro gets the nod here. He is outstanding at all facets of the game -- hitting, fielding, running, throwing. Sure he made 5 errors last season, but he had 11 assists. He batted .310 with 103 runs scored for a bad team. He stole 43 of 47 bases as well. He is the best lead-off hitter in baseball right now.
RF -- Nick Markakis of the Orioles. 17 assists from RF makes a person stand up and take notice. He batted .306 with 20 homers, 87 RBI and 106 runs scored for a team that was out of the race by the middle of August. I look for big things from this guy in the future.
SP -- Cliff Lee of the Indians. A bright spot in an otherwise dismal season for the Indians. He began the season as their #5 starter and will likely win the Cy Young in the AL. 22-3, 2.54 ERA. Pretty good for a guy that was sent back to the minors in 2007 to work on mechanics. Tim Lincecum gets 2nd place here.
RP -- With Fransisco Rodriguez of the Angels setting the major league record for saves with 62 (in 69 chances), one would think he would get tis spot, but as the coach says on ESPN's College Gameday, "Not so fast". Brad Lidge had very similar stats (IP, BB) and more K's with a better ERA than K'Rod did. He did not blow a save all season (he also had no regular season losses, compared to K'Rod's 3) and struck out 92 hitters compared to K'Rod's 77. The ERA differential was 2.24 for K'Rod to 1.95 for Lidge (Joe Nathan's name should be thrown in here -- 1.33 ERA). All things considered, Lidge gets the nod.
DH -- Aubrey Huff of the Orioles, with little comment.
Rookie of the Year in the bigs last season was Joe Votto of the Reds. He won't win the NL ROY (Geovany Soto likely will) but he had superior stats.
Comments?

[love_that_reefer]

I can't say anything bad about this lineup. Good stuff!!

[catman]

I hesitated to put Young at SS, thinking that Hanley Ramirez would have been a better choice, but went with the defense. Hanley needs to improve on his glove-work. He would be an easy #2 there.

[HollywoodLeo]

I think you should have included 3 or 4 SPs, but otherwise I like it.

[catman]

I was only putting the best at each position. I would include Johan Santana, Tim Lincecum, and Roy Halladay as additional starters. How's that?

[HollywoodLeo]

Definitely good selections