Yankees: Gleyber Torres and Luke Voit snubbed from the All-Star game

The rest of the All-Star rosters were announced on Sunday and surprisingly the only Yankees player selected to join Gary Sanchez and DJ LeMahieu on the AL squad was Aroldis Chapman. Gleyber Torres and Luke Voit were both very deserving of a reserve spot but they were each snubbed.

It’s hard to understand how the 54-28 Yankees only have three All-Stars on the American League squad. That’s the same number of All-Stars as the 39-42 Chicago White Sox have. You could have made a strong case for as many as six Yankees to make the team (if you include Adam Ottavino) but they should’ve had at least five.

Torres and Voit both made it to the final round of fan voting to start at their respective positions but they each came up just short in second place. When Torres was beaten out by Twins SS Jorge Polanco I figured he’d make it as a reserve for sure but instead Indians SS Francisco Lindor earned the last backup spot despite being on the IL for the first three weeks of the season.

There is no doubt Lindor is one of the top 15 players in the game today but when you look at his numbers compared to Torres’ it’s just wrong that he was selected over him.

Torres: .295 BA, 19 HR, 47 RBI, .550 SLG %, .913 OPS

Lindor: .291, 12 HR, 27 RBI, .498 SLG %, .848 OPS

It’s an even bigger disgrace that he was selected over Boston shortstop Xander Bogaerts who was also among the top snubs in the AL. Bogearts is hitting .299 with 16 HR, 57 RBI with an OPS of .932.

Now part of the reason Lindor earned the nod could be that this year’s All-Star game is being played in Cleveland. However, that’s still not a good enough reason to give him a spot on the team over players who were certainly more deserving.

Another pair of All-Stars who made the team as reserves ahead of Torres were Angels second basemen Tommy La Stella and Royals super utility man Whit Merrifield. Both players are having career years but neither one of them is having a more productive first half than Gleyber is. La Stella is one of the best stories in baseball this season but in every major offensive category, Gleyber has him beat. He’s got much better power numbers than Merrifield as well but he was the Royals only representative so he got the nod.

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Major League Baseball is the only one of the four major American sports that picks a representative from each team to make the All-Star game and it needs to stop. In order to be an All-Star, you should have to earn it by putting up All-Star caliber numbers and not because of this worn out rule. If that was the case we wouldn’t be calling Gleyber a snub and the same goes for Voit.

Voit missed out on making his first career Midsummer Classic despite putting up better all-around numbers than Seattle’s only All-Star Daniel Vogelbach. The Mariners DH/1B has Voit beat in home runs (20 to 17) but Voit has the edge in BA (.280 to .244), RBI (50 to 48), and OBP (.393 to .379).

For a player like Torres who’s only 22 and has already made one All-Star game, I think it’s safe to assume that he’ll make it back many more times before his career is over. For Voit, however, that might not be the case.

That’s why it’s such a shame he wasn’t selected to go to Cleveland because as good of a player as he is and will continue to be you never know how many opportunities you’ll get to become an All-Star. Especially after we’ve now seen a handful of guys who are having outstanding seasons miss out because of that ridiculous one player from each team rule.

The rest of the All-Star rosters were announced on Sunday and surprisingly the only Yankees player selected to join Gary Sanchez and DJ LeMahieu on the AL squad was Aroldis Chapman. Gleyber Torres and Luke Voit were both very deserving of a reserve spot but they were each snubbed.

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