The Giants Deserving All-Stars

Due to the Giants being the defending National League Champions Bruce Bochy has the honor of being the skipper for the NL All-Star team. One of the perks that comes along with that is picking the reserves and pitchers for the team.

According to Alex Pavlovic of the San Jose Mercury News he is going to "be a little biased" and try to give as many Giants as possible a shot at being on the team.

So who on this team is deserving to be an All-Star?

Here are the Giants position players, with their WAR to date and their rank for their position:

Pos	Player	WAR	Rank
C	Buster Posey	1.6	5
C	Eli Whiteside	0.1	25
1B	Aubrey Huff	-0.6	26
2B	Freddy Sanchez	1.0	8
SS	Mike Fontenot	0.5	14
SS	Brandon Crawford	0.2	17
SS	Manny Burris	-0.4	27
SS/3B	Miguel Tejada	-0.5	28
3B	Pablo Sandoval	1.4	4
OF	Aaron Rowand	1.2	31
OF	Andres Torres	1.0	37
OF	Pat Burrell	0.7	47
OF	Cody Ross	0.7	49
OF	Nate Schierholtz	0.3	58

The pickings are pretty slim. Buster Posey and Freddy Sanchez would likely be headed to the All-Star game if they both weren't out with major injuries. After that only Sandoval is left with a respectable ranking at his given position.

So if Bochy is going to pick a position player from the Giants I would say that it has to be Sandoval and that is really only a defensible choice because 3B in the National League this season is especially weak.

Next let's look at the pitchers. I will do the same thing as I did for the position players but I will include both the Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference WAR and rank numbers because for pitchers they calculate them differently and there is a pretty large divergence.

Fangraphs:

Pos	Player	WAR	Rank
SP	Tim Lincecum	2.6	7
SP	Matt Cain	2.1	11
SP	Madison Bumgarner	2.0	12
SP	Ryan Vogelsong	1.6	23
SP	Jonathan Sanchez	1.0	46
RP	Sergio Romo	0.9	10
RP	Brian Wilson	0.7	16
RP	Javier Lopez	0.4	31

Baseball-Reference:

Pos	Player	WAR	Rank
SP	Ryan Vogelsong	3.0	8
SP	Matt Cain	2.0	17
SP	Tim Lincecum	1.9	19
SP	Jonathan Sanchez	1.1	40
SP	Madison Bumgarner	0.7	50
RP	Brian Wilson	1.3	10
RP	Ramon Ramirez	1.1	17
RP	Javier Lopez	1.0	19
RP	Sergio Romo	0.8	31

The thing that I notice when looking at this is that man the Giants have some really good pitching and it is deep. No other team had all 5 of their starters in the top 50 for WAR in either measure (although the Phillies pitchers do occupy the top 3).

If Bochy is going to be biased this is where he can get away with some home cooking.

For the starters I would say that Lincecum, Cain and Vogelsong would all be justifiable choices and for the relievers Wilson, Romo and Lopez all have a case.

If I were to take a guess as to who would be the guys selected by Bochy I would say that he takes 4 Giants and that he goes with Sandoval (partial pay back for '09 snub), Lincecum, Vogelsong (how could he pass him up with his story and out of no where excellence) and Wilson. Between now and July 3rd things could change but this is my gut feeling.

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