Tommy Pham rips struggling Yankees, Red Sox players for high All-Star vote totals
The current voting totals for the 2019 All-Star Game were released on Monday, and Tommy Pham is not happy with how he and his Tampa Bay Rays teammates are doing.
Just one Rays player, Austin Meadows, is in the top five at their position. Meadows has the third-most votes of all American League outfielders. After him, the highest any other Rays position player lands is seventh.
All-Star fan voting is never usually about the actual statistics. The Rays as a team are doing great (just a half-game out of first place) and they have a number of standout players. All-Star fan voting is really a popularity contest, and after seeing some of the players who have higher vote totals, Pham is pretty sick of it, as he told Josh Tolentino of the Athletic on Tuesday.
“We won’t get credit, man. It’s always unfair. Big market vs. small market. It’s never going to be fair. With Avisaíl (Garcia) and me, when I saw the ballot of the guys ahead of us – (Red Sox) Jackie Bradley Jr. and (Yankees) Brett Gardner – and they’re hitting around .200 or lower. That tells you it right there.”
Both Bradley, who is on the Boston Red Sox, and Gardner who is on the New York Yankees, are right ahead of Pham in AL outfielder voting. Pham, who is hitting .288/.399/.463 is 15th with 119,691 votes. Bradley is 14th and is hitting .199/.301/.332. Gardner is 13th and is hitting .228/.302/.443 By the numbers, Pham should be ahead of both Bradley and Gardner.
It’s even more egregious when you look at designated hitter Garcia, who is hitting .301/.355/.504 and is 9th in voting. Shohei Ohtani is 4th but is hitting .256. Giancarlo Stanton is 5th and has played just three games this season — all in March, and all in left field!
But All-Star fan voting isn’t done by the numbers. Because it’s a popularity contest, Pham knows that most of his Rays teammates are going to be doomed to the bottom of those All-Star vote totals lists while struggling players on big-market teams get more love. Via the Athletic:
“When you look at the NL, too, you see all the big-market teams dominating the voting. It’s never going to be fair. It has to change because when you go into arbitration, that’s a big thing that’s talked about with accomplishments. Baseball has to be better to fix it. We’re not getting any help either from ESPN. We haven’t had an ESPN game all year. That’s a way for fans to see us by putting us on one of those big-time games. But we continually never get put on, so all they see is the same players. The Cubs, Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox – the same teams are always on there.
“When you look at it, all right, we’re in a small market, we’re never on ESPN. We don’t have a ton of national TV games. We’re at a disadvantage.”
Pham’s frustration is understandable. The Rays are good this year, but they get little national attention. But they also get little local attention — they have the second-worst average attendance in MLB at 13,912. As a competitive baseball team, they’re doing great. As a baseball franchise, the Rays are struggling to get even hometown fans to come to their games. If there’s a term that’s smaller than small-market, that’s what they Rays are. It’s not surprising that most Rays players have low vote totals, and it’s not entirely about being ignored by ESPN.
There may never be a way to find a balance in All-Star voting. The All-Star Game is for the fans, and as long as the fans get to have a say, situations like this will keep happening. The well-known, popular players on large-market teams will get a lot of love, while worthy players on small-market teams get left out. Pham says that MLB needs to fix it, but it doesn’t seem like anyone knows how to do it — at least not in a way that will make everyone happy.
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