Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83 based; site houem.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!vax135!houxz!houxm!houem!jhr2
From: jhr2@houem.UUCP (J.ROSENBLUTH)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: All-Star Selection
Message-ID: <263@houem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jun-84 13:45:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: houem.263
Posted: Wed Jun 20 13:45:40 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Jun-84 07:36:58 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 32

I believe that an all-star
should be the best player at his position.
That is, the player who most would positively effect
the team in their chances to win.

With that criterion in mind,
I do not think that the best player is necessarily the one
having the best first half of this year.
As an example, one year ago Bruce Benedict had a slightly
better first half than Gary Carter.
Now, who is the better player?
That was easy, wasn't it?
Putting it another way, would you
trade Carter to obtain Benedict?
Another example was Toby Harrah versus
George Brett a couple of years ago.
To decide who the better player is,
it makes sense to look at performance over
the last few years, weighting recent
performance more heavily, but not this
year's performance with weight one and all other years zero.

So, before naming Ramirez or Washington or Kingman
or Sandberg or Mattingly or whoever,
it might be better to think of the last few years.

Finally, the above comments are based on the
criterion in the first paragraph.
The comments do not apply to other criteria.


                                 Josh Rosenbluth (...houxm!houem!jhr2)