The AL Needs To Stop Dominating The All-Star Game
(Photo Courtesy of The Athletic)
Another year, another MLB All-Star game where the American League wins. It wasn’t complete domination, but the AL was in control for the majority of the game walking away with a 5-2 victory. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a towering homerun and had two RBI’s, which secured the All-Star Game MVP for him. Hell, even Mike Zunino, who’s hitting .195, hit a homerun.
The Al has now gone 26-6-1 in All-Star Games since 1988. That is complete domination, especially since the AL has won eight in a row. Mike Trout didn’t even play in this year’s game and they still won by three runs. The question is where do we go from here? People could argue that the history of the ASG is based on teams going on winning streaks. For example, the AL won 12 of 16 ASG’s from 1933-1949 while the National league won 33 of 42 games from 1950-1987 (they played multiple ASG’s some years for some unknown reasons). Even if that’s true, one team shouldn’t be able to dominate an ASG, especially considering the fact that an NL team has won the World Series seven out of the past 11 years.
One solution to this problem is to adopt the NBA’s ASG style. Get a captain from the AL and a captain from the NL and have each player choose who they want out of the available starters voted by the fans. How could this work you’re asking when there are only two players available for each position besides outfield? Well it’s an ASG, so there aren’t a lot of players that are significantly better than another when it comes to the positions. We know that Fernando Tatís Jr. is better than Xander Bogaerts (or at least most people would say that) but the difference between them isn’t by that much. This format has a ton of possibilities and I believe it would allow for closer All-Star games which we all want as baseball fans.