McAdam: Flawed process sends the wrong Sox players to All-Star Game

Every so often, Major League Baseball tweaks its All-Star selection process, with the stated aim of selecting the most deserving players, even though in truth, the changes are done more with marketing in mind.

This year, in an effort to gin up additional fan interest, MLB held a two-tier fan balloting process, first with the top three players chosen at each position, followed by a day-long final vote to elect starters. Finally, the reserves were named Sunday, chosen by a combination of player votes and selections from the commissioner's office.

And when it came to the Red Sox, they still got it wrong.

Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts aren't going. Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez are.



In balloting chosen by the players, Betts was added to the A.L. outfield and Martinez chosen as an extra DH behind starter Hunter Pence.

Meanwhile, there was no room for either Devers or Bogaerts, the two players who make up the Red Sox' left side of the infield and who have been the team's best players in the first three months of the season.

Bogaerts has a .932 OPS, tops on the team while also leading all Red Sox players with 57. He leads the league in doubles and went into Sunday's action tied for the league lead in extra-base hits. He's also played a strong shortstop and has unquestionably been the club's most consistent player from Day One.

Devers began slowly, with no homers and just three RBI in his first 24 games. But since then, he's hit .342 with 12 homers and 47 RBI in his last 57 games with an OPS of .970.

It can't be said that Betts or Martinez are totally undeserving. Martinez leads the team in homers and his .923 OPS is second on the team, behind only Bogaerts. Betts, meanwhile, leads the league in runs scored and is second in walks. Betts remains an elite outfielder, as defensive metrics suggest and he ranks second in the A.L. among outfielders with seven assists.

But Betts' overall performance has been mostly underwhelming while Martinez has been inconsistent at times.

Anyone watching the Red Sox over the first 83 games would say that Bogaerts has been the MVP, with Devers the runner-up.

Yet, they won't be in Cleveland next week when the 90th All-Star game is played.

That's not the fault of either Betts or Martinez.

But their selection -- and by extension, the exclusion of Bogaerts and Devers -- highlights two problems with the current format.

First, reputation matters. Both Betts and Martinez are more established players, each coming off career-best seasons. Betts was the A.L. MVP last year while Martinez finished fourth in the balloting and into September, flirted with becoming just the second player to win a Triple Crown in the last half-century.

But name recognition matters when it comes to the players' vote, and both Betts and Martinez had built-in advantages in that regard.

Secondly, MLB continues to insist that each team be represented with at least one player because God forbid fans in Kansas City or Baltimore didn't have a local rooting interest for the game.

That means MLB shoe-horns in players who might not necessarily be deserving in an effort to appeal to fan bases everywhere.

In the grand scheme of things, does this constitute some huge miscarriage of justice? Of course not.

But it's another reminder that baseball, for all its tinkering, still is stuck with an imperfect process when it comes to stocking its All-Star teams. And for a sport which is rightly criticized for not promoting and marketing its top young players to a national audience, this oversight is one more example of the game shooting itself in the foot.