6 Players Who Should Have Been All-Stars This Year
The MLB All-Star game is fun, but the selection process is not a perfect system. This year is certainly no exception.
Whether in the form of giving some undeserving players too many votes like Kansas City Royals fans did or in the form of potentially snubbing a true star such as Todd Frazier, the process just doesn't always work.
While some of the pleas were heard for Miguel Cabrera and Frazier, not every statistically deserving player made the All-Star roster.
Four deserving players, thankfully, became replacement players: Ryan Braun, Brett Gardner, Brian Dozier and Clayton Kershaw. Braun is filling in for Matt Holliday, Gardner was tabbed to replace Alex Gordon, Dozier is replacing Jose Bautista and Kershaw is replacing Max Scherzer because of Major League Baseball rules that won't allow Scherzer to pitch on just a few days of rest.
For all position players, I looked at their nERD (our in-house baseball metric that dictates how many runs above or below league average a player is performing) scores as well as their wOBA, wRC+ and fWAR to determine if their roster spots were deserved or not. For pitchers, I also evaluated their nERD scores, fWAR as well as their ERA, FIP, strikeout, home run and walk per nine rates.
