One of my enduring memories of watching the All-Star game as a child — a child who became a baseball fan in a time before high-speed internet, social media, or even interleague play — was learning about all the players I’d been unable to see throughout the regular season. That included the American League and West Coast stars, but also a parade of forgettable pitchers, and yes, it always seemed to be pitchers, from crappy teams.
For some reason, Royals right-hander José Rosado is the guy who sticks out in my mind. Rookie of the Year vote-getter in his age-21 season, All-Star at 22 and 24, done in the majors at 25. If he hadn’t shown up in pregame intros between Justin Thompson and Jeff Cirillo that one time, I might never have been aware of him. Ever since then, the token All-Star has fascinated me.
The rules dictate that each team must have one representative, and as someone who grew up rooting for a team that frequently could not muster more than one good player a year, I am a rabid supporter of this rule. Even if it throws up a proverbial curveball every so often. The tragic thing about baseball is that an individual player can be really good and still be unable to pull his team out of the basement. So when a team musters merely a single All-Star representative, sometimes the player in question deserves to be there on merit. Most of the time, even. Especially when it’s a starting pitcher or a position player.
But sometimes the fans, the players, the managers, and — in case of last resort — the commissioner and his functionaries will look a last-place roster up and down and go, “Man, these guys stink!” So they’ll hold their noses and pick the reliever with the lowest ERA on the team and send him to the All-Star Game. Relievers only throw 30 or 40 innings in the first half anyway — surely someone in that bullpen must’ve BABIP’d his way into a non-embarrassing ERA in that small a sample.
Since the strike, there have been 27 All-Star relievers (well, 26, including Brad Hand twice) who were the only representative of a team that finished with a winning percentage of .450 or worse.
It’s a pretty common thing, it turns out. You know what? Let’s just see the list, with each player’s first-half stats from the year he got picked.
The Token All-Star Relievers
We’ve got two this year — Tanner Scott and Mason Miller — and both are there on merit. Miller in particular is about as exciting as an inexperienced closer from a noncompetitive team can be. This list includes a Hall of Famer, at least one Hall of Very Good-er, and several players who were consistently among the best closers in the game for a number of years. Nobody would blink at those pitchers making the Midsummer Classic. But the list also includes, well, some Evan Meek types, the ones you’ll forget until the time comes to Remember Some Guys.
What I tried to capture in the fame section is how familiar your average fan would be with this Charlie Brown-iest type of All-Star representative. Has he been an All-Star before? Does he play for a big team, or has he in the past? Has he pitched in the playoffs, and if so, has he recorded the last out of a World Series clincher and been etched into the public record as the first layer of a championship dogpile?
