Sacramento’s Jacob Wilson is having a wonderful rookie season. He’s cooled down the last three or so weeks, but that was inevitable: The kid’s still hitting .339 and slugging close to .500, and he’s running away with the American League Rookie of the Year Award. Fantastic stuff!
I have absolutely no idea how he was voted to start the All-Star Game.
I mean that both literally and figuratively. I literally do not know how there are enough Sacramento A’s fans to vote him into the All-Star Game. That team is dreadful, and nobody notices, and nobody cares, and they’re drawing fewer than 10,000 people to a game, and they have an owner so awful that he’s managed to alienate fans in three cities (Oakland, Las Vegas, and Sacramento — and he’s only getting started).
None of this is Jacob Wilson’s fault. But I simply do not understand how X million people actually voted for him. Who are these people?
And figuratively … I don’t know how anyone can look at Jacob Wilson and then look at Bobby Witt Jr., and say “Yeah, Wilson is having the better year.” Witt is the best defensive shortstop in the American League, while Wilson, let’s be honest, is struggling pretty mightily defensively. Witt hits with a lot more power (he leads the league in doubles), and he might be the fastest guy in baseball. This isn’t even a contest. I mean, Wilson is in the “having a good rookie season” category, and Witt is in the “Top 5 in the MVP again” category.
I could have seen it if the voters had gone with Houston’s Jeremy Peña, who’s crushing it and playing awesome defense. But Wilson? It doesn’t add up for me.
Unless … we here at JoeBlogs are out of the loop, and people are still out there measuring players by batting average.
Maybe a .339 batting average is still magic to millions of fans.
Maybe it’s 1983 again.
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