Yahoo Sports Baseball fans have a chance to make All-Star voting great again
We suck at elections. Not just sports elections. All elections.
Put us in front of a ballot box — whether it’s a real one with results that actually affect peoples’ lives or silly sports stuff — and it seems most of us forget how to make good decisions. We The People have turned into We The People Are Probably Gonna Mess This Up.
Before you think this is about politics or the president or any single local elected official, trust me, it’s not. It’s about how we vote. In baseball, but also in life.
This year’s MLB All-Star Game might just be giving us a chance to actually do this election thing right. There’s a new system that’s trimming the fat and aiming to take away some of the tribalism that’s made All-Star voting a facepalming event in the past. Maybe, just maybe, if we don’t screw this up, it’ll remind people that there’s a better way to vote.
There was a big shift in All-Star voting this year. Instead of an all-out, ballot-stuffing free-for-all, MLB tried something new. It threw open the doors for fans to vote for every player on their favorite team like they always do, but that was cut short by a few weeks. Now, there’s a new second phase of voting.
Starting today, the voting resets and the top three players at each position are part of the final election. If you want to use the political terms we’re all familiar with, the early round was the primary and this is the general election. This is the serious stuff.
As a whole, the new process has more moving parts and might be a little more confusing at first but it also has its heart in the right place. It’s about actually picking the best players not about which team has the most mobilized fanbase.
The final round started at 12 p.m. ET Wednesday and voting is open for 28 hours on MLB.com, the MLB Ballpark and MLB At Bat mobile app. You can even vote via your Google searches. Type in a players’ name and you’ll have the option to vote for him if he’s a finalist.
This more narrow field presents something All-Star voting hasn’t given us in the past — fewer options. You can’t just go down the list and pick every player from the same team. Because you shouldn’t do that. Just like you shouldn’t vote in a political election and vote for every candidate with an R or D next to their name. If you want to fill out a complete and informed ballot, you’ll have to — gasp! — do a little more research.
In the past, we’ve seen Kansas City Royals and Chicago Cubs fans were deeply involved in All-Star voting to the point where almost their entire lineup was first or second in All-Star voting. Even if they didn’t deserve it. It was a flaw that’s grown in modern baseball and perhaps is a symptom of modern baseball.
We’ve submitted to tribalism. It’s not totally fans’ fault. It’s way easier to live, breathe and vote your tribe these days. In the era of push alerts, regional cable networks and team-driven social media platforms, a hardcore baseball fan can consume hours and hours of content each day about their favorite team.
That, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. But when fans become zealots, we can start to have a problem, which brings us back to voting as a whole.
For many of the voters in the world — whether we’re talking about politics or homecoming elections — we vote our tribe. We consume information from viewpoints that we agree with. We use it to back up our own beliefs. And when it comes time to cast a ballot, we’re going with our people.
Not everyone is like this. But this is largely what the information age has turned us into. And our social-media-addicted society doesn’t help.
We should be thinking about things more objectively, being honest about our biases and trying to make the best decision. That’s the truth whether we’re talking about casting ballots for MLB All-Stars, your local city council members or which presidential candidate you support.
That’s why it’ll be interesting to see what happens in this baseball vote. Of the finalists, 17 of the 30 teams are represented. Some teams have many more finalists than others, so it’s not a completely balanced social experiment.
The Yankees have six finalists — every infield position, catcher and one outfielder. The Cubs have seven finalists, including people like Kyle Schwarber and Albert Almora Jr., who don’t really deserve it. The powers of tribalism are strong indeed.
The question becomes whether baseball fans just vote for players from their favorite team and tune out the rest. Or if they actually take an objective approach and vote for the most deserving players.
It would be refreshing to see Red Sox fans voting for the Yankees that deserve it. Or Giants fans voting for Cody Bellinger. Or Cardinals fans voting for Christian Yelich and/or Javy Baez.
To be honest, I’m not terribly confident that democracy is gonna pull through on this one, but I’m crossing my fingers. It would be good for baseball.
And, heck, it would be a good showing for our society as a whole.
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Mike Oz is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @mikeoz
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