Are We Worked Up

I went on vacation, but I didn't miss anything.

The Nats are winning enough to keep their crappy rivals at bay. The lineup has more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire, and no outside help is forthcoming. Stephen Strasburg is hurt, and the Nats can't beat the Reds.

Nothing has changed! It's like I stepped into some kinda pain in the ass spacetime vortex that bumps you back six weeks. Don't tell me what happens in June. I want to be surprised.

Other than that, I don't know - are we worked up about our dudes not making the All Star team? Scherzer's in there, but he probably won't pitch. Harper helped MLB and its sponsorship partners set a major league data-mining record by getting more votes than anyone ever.

But that's all we got, at least until the first wave of replacements comes in. All Star rosters are getting to be like the NBA playoffs - it's not an accomplishment to make it; it's a failure if you don't make it.

I am looking forward to the All Star break, but it's nothing to do with the game. This team is in dire need of four days off. It brings us four days closer to Jayson Werth coming back, but there is an upside. We also have some good players who will benefit from the time off.

Psephography

We're starting to get early results from the All Star voting, which reminded me that I'm boycotting it this year and probably forever.

They announced before the season that there wouldn't be any more paper ballots. This news, along with a neat reminder of why the internet is terrible, can be found in a piece by Ted Berg on "For the W!N," USA Today's attempt to show how hip and snarky it can be.

Bad news for people who aren’t reading this: Major League Baseball will eliminate its paper All-Star ballots in 2015...

Only people who don't know how to internet because reasons use paper ballots. For teh Epic W!N LOL!

This is terrible news for people who love paper chads but great news for inevitable Justin Bieber write-in campaigns.

OMG Justin Bieber amirite! Such chad very ballot wow. Something something bacon.

And moving to an online-only ballot might help the league keep it a bit more current, rather than frustrate fans with a list half-full of guys who are hurt or haven’t played regularly.

Look at the ballot, you meme-spewing halfwit. Jonathan Schoop has played nine games this year, and he's on there. Scooter Gennett is back in the minors, but you can still vote for him. Anthony Rendon is on the ballot.

So anyway, I'm sitting this election out. I love paper ballots. We all enjoy baseball, but let's not act like there's not a lot of downtime. Poking out a little piece of paper next to "A. Rendon" forty times is second only to drinking when it comes to filling that downtime. It's to the point where I don't even want to go to a game after voting ends. Part of that is because I try to avoid going outside in August, but the lack of ballots has something to do with it.

I don't like not having the paper ballot option, because signing up for things on the internet is creepy. I've given MLB my information enough times that it probably doesn't matter at this point (I weighed my options, and writing in Livan was worth it), but it's still not something to be encouraged.

Look at this privacy policy. It doesn't come out and say, "We need you to sign up for stuff so we can mine rich veins of data," but I can read between the lines.

Token

I sort of re-learned two things today from watching the Braves game. One is that TBS, once home to little more than the Braves and Andy Griffith reruns, is about to show the All-Star Game, some of the playoffs, and eventually a whole pile of regular season games. I'm in favor of this. I've always found Turner's sports programming, both baseball on TBS and the NBA on TNT, to be about as good as it gets. More Joe Simpson and Ernie Johnson? Less Joe Buck and Tim McCarver? Imagine my eyes lighting up like Jim Bowden watching a really fast centerfielder ground out to second base three times a game.

The other thing I re-learned was that the All Star Game is imminent, and that's bringing me down. The Nationals' only All Star is Dmitri Young, and it's hard to argue with the selection. And that's the problem: our token, only-there-because-everyone-gets-one player is a scrap pile gamble no one else wanted who's not even going to be around next year. I mean, yeah, good for Dmitri and keep it up, but it's disappointing that he's the best we could come up with to represent the curly W. Looking at the rest of the NL roster makes it sting even worse. There's 24 year old Russell Martin. There's 23 year old Prince Fielder and teammates David Wright (24) and Jose Reyes (24).

We don't have one of those. Who's our Jose Reyes? We're leaning pretty heavily on Ryan Zimmerman to give us something to brag about to fans of other teams, but he has yet to prove that he's not the fourth-best third baseman in a five-team division. The All Star Game is an exhibition for the world's very best baseball players. All I can think of is that we don't have any of them.