As many people noted this week, Jimmy Rollins has surged to the top of the NL All-Star voting at shortstop.
He’s 87,000 votes ahead of Florida’s Hanley Ramirez in the latest round of voting. That’s obviously being helped by the same voters who have pushed Chase Utley into the top vote getter in the league and Raul Ibanez to the top of National League outfielders.
The problem with that however, is that Jimmy Rollins doesn’t deserve to be an all-star this season. He’s only batting .221 for the season with 5 HR and 25 RBI. He’s just not at the point where he was that past few years. He’s nowhere near where he was two years ago when he won MVP.
He’s been hitting somewhat better the past few weeks, but that’s not much of an accomplishment considering what he was doing.
Even Charlie Manuel realized that Jimmy was struggling and dropped him to sixth in the order, where he did well. Which of course meant a promotion back to leadoff. Jimmy just needs to go back to getting on base and not be a power hitter. There’s plenty of them on this team.
With all of this, there is simply no reason for J-Roll to be on the NL All-Star team this year, yet alone start. Disagree? Let me know why.
-KK
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