Admittedly, the MLB All-Star Game is notably better than it's NBA and NFL counterparts.  However, just because the it's best available, does not mean it cannot be improved upon.  More often than not, we're left with something resembling the best players in the game getting together for an exhibition.  But the current climate of the game has left many fans with a sour taste in their mouth when it comes to the Mid-Summer Classic.  So how can we improve this game so that it fits the desires of fans and brings about the best competition?  First, we have to start with what issues the game is plagued with.

1. Fans, especially in the American League are subject to an onslaught of undeserving Yankees and Red Sox in the All-Star Game.  In 2012, every starter for the AL team played for either the Red Sox, Yank, Rangers or Tigers with the exception of Jose Bautista.  How could anyone justify starting a .248 hitting Curtis Granderson over the likes of Mike Trout or Adam Jones?  How could anyone justify starting a defensively deficient, .228 hitting Mike Napoli at catcher above Joe Mauer or Matt Wieters?  This is the result of fan voting.  While it serves it's purpose as a way of getting fans involved in the game, more than anything it has alienated smaller fan bases out West and has prevented the best players from participating.  The best way to fix this is to simply take the best statistical players and start them.  This does not have to be an argument between old school vs new school, even though it inevitably would turn into one (remember the nightmare last fall between Triple Crown Winner Miguel Cabrera and best player in the game Mike Trout?)  MLB would simply need to come to one common way of evaluating players statistically and start those players.

2. Revamp the Home Run Derby.  Every year, I'm excited to watch this game, in fact, I'm giddy over it.  Then it turns into a 2.5 hour marathon of hearing Chris Berman incessantly chant "Back back back back back".  The derby has it's moments though, like watching Josh Hamilton in Yankee Stadium or the ridiculous roof shot Mark Trumbo hit in Kansas City last season.  We could improve this event by allowing participants to use metal bats.  It may scare away some players because of the bat weight difference, but it would also result in 600 foot homeruns, the like we've never seen before.  We could also turn this into an international affair.  Instead of American League versus National League, why not allow countries to field two participants each?  That almost always brings out the best, especially among the Latin American countries.  Also, if there's a way to speed up the derby by perhaps placing time limits or making players swing at pitches, we could cut the run-time in half.

Do you need another reason to dislike Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria? Of course you do. On Tuesday, Loria apparently overrode manager Mike Redmond and switched starting pitchers Ricky Nolasco and Jose Fernandez in Miami's doubleheader with Minnesota. Loria wanted Fernandez to start the day game and Nolasco to start the night game.

Loria insisted Fernandez, the team's prized 20-year-old rookie, pitch in the first half of the doubleheader at frigid Target Field instead of the scheduled Nolasco because the day game was expected to be warmer. The temperature at Fernandez's first pitch (38 degrees) was actually colder than at the beginning of Nolasco's start (42 degrees).

Rookie manager Mike Redmond delivered the news to Nolasco about 2½ hours before the first game against the Minnesota Twins, and it did not go over well with him or his teammates. Standard protocol for doubleheaders is that veterans choose which game they want to pitch. Not only did Loria ignore that and further alienate Nolasco, the Marlins' highest-paid player who has previously requested a trade, he sabotaged Redmond less than 20 games into his managerial career.

This is a joke. Less than a month into Redmond's tenure as Marlins manager, he's already become Loria's puppet running the club. Nolasco, Miami's longest tenured and higher paid player, is getting disrespectced once again. Perhaps the best part of this is Loria's "warmer weather" logic, when in reality, the opposite actually ended up being true. For the record, Fernandez allowed four runs in five innings, the second straight bad start of his career, while Nolasco picked up his first win of the year for Miami in the nightcap. 

It's really great that Jeffrey Loria cares so much about the team that he owns that he's fiddling with the on-field product a month into a season that's bound to be a complete disaster. You can't even use the logic behind his dismantling of the team last year to rationalize this decision. There's not one good thing on the field that could have come from Fernandez starting game one and Nolasco starting game two and finding out two and a half hours before the game.

If Fernandez ended up getting hurt in the earlier start for whatever reason, the few remaining Marlins fans probably would have ended up marching on Marlins Park with pitchforks in hand once news that it was Loria's decision to swap him and Nolasco leaked out.

UPDATE: Loria claims to be innocent in the whole matter, according to a report from Fox Sports.

“I had nothing to do with the decision,” Loria told FOXSports.com on Friday. “I was informed of the decision by the baseball department. I told them it was their call.

“I don’t make decisions on who to pitch and when, how to go about it - that’s not my role. Sometimes they call me and tell me what they’re doing. But I don’t call them up and say, ‘This is what is going to happen.’ That’s not true.”

This is just getting ridiculous now. So by "baseball department", is he throwing president of baseball operations Larry Beinfest and GM Michael Hill under the bus while absolving himself and team president (and resident gopher) David Samson? What a dysfunctional organization.

[Yahoo]

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It is that time of year, time for MLB to publish the All-Star ballot for our voting pleasure. Or your scrutinizing displeasure depending on who you are. While it can be fun to cast votes for your favorite players, it can also be a painful exercise due to all the annual annoyances in the ballot.

For example, the good folks at MLB just can't seem to perform the simple task of getting the right players on the ballot. The most obvious issue is with injured players. Now, it is understood that these ballots need to be finalized for printing at some point, but given the technological era we live in and the amount of online voting involved, you'd think the MLB big wigs could find a way to develop a more dynamic ballot that isn't littered with players who haven't played all this year.

2013 is no exception as the ballot is awash in players who haven't so much as touched a big league field yet:

Mark Teixeira - Out until May 1st... not really, but let's keep pretending that will happen.

Casey Kotchman - Out with a stupidity-induced injury, not that he was ever going to get votes anyway.

Corey Hart - On the shelf for months.

Stephen Drew - How about we just always assume Drew family members will be too hurt to play and ban them from all future All-Star ballots.

Hanley Ramirez - The Dodgers have enough money, make them pay to reprint the ballot with someone other than the injured HanRam on the ballot.

Brian McCann - Because of this clerical error, El Oso Blanco is getting screwed in the ballot box.

Carlos Ruiz - Suspended for 25 games, so it isn't like this came by surprise.

Curtis Granderson - What do you know? Another injured Yankee!

Derek Jeter - Heaven forbid an All-Star ballot not have Derek Jeter on it even when he is unlikely to even be healthy in time for the Mid-summer Classic. It wouldn't be a shock if he still appears on the ballot after his retirement.

Delmon Young - We actually approve of this inclusion in light of the burgeoning effort on the internet to get Delmon voted into the game.

Adam Eaton - Since he is a rookie, you can't even justify his inclusion based on career track record.

Luke Scott - With all the platoon players the Rays employ, you'd think they could pick someone who is actually healthy and playing. But you have to appeal to the Tea Party, right?

The Washington Nationals have struggled a bit thisyear. But on Thursday night, their performance was vintage (well, vintage as of last year...which really doesn't make it vintage) in an 8-1 win over the Reds. The Nationals pitching staff gave up just one run on one hit, and short of a Joey Votto home, no Reds players reached second base all night. Combine that with their offensive outburst, and the you can't count the Nationals out yet, despite their 11-11 start.

PIC OF THE DAY

Coco Crisp, Jed Lowrie, and Chris Young all converge on a fly ball, but are unable to come up with it. (Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports)

Game of the Day: Royals 8, Tigers 3 (ten innings). The Royals took advantage of Justin Verlander leaving the game after seven innings, They trailed 3-2 at the time, but as soon as he left the game, Lorenzo Cain tied the game up with a sac fly. The game went into extras and in the tenth, Phil Coke loaded the bases and walked George Kottaras to force in a run. He was replaced on the hill by Darin Downs, who proceeded to allow a grand slam to Alex Gordon, pushing the Kansas City lead to five. Greg Holland didn't flinch in the tenth, and the Tigers fell.

Seattle Mariners manager Eric Wedge is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.

At least that's how he seemed after his team's 10-3 loss to the Houston Astros Wednesday night. That gave the Mariners their second series loss of the season to the Astros, and it's only April.

Houston was generally considered to be the worst team in MLB — if for no other reason than its $26 million payroll. That alone should keep the Mariners out of last place in the AL West this year. Yet right now, Seattle looks like the worse team. 

Wedge was so fed up with what he saw that he held a closed-door meeting with his players following the game. Ryan Divish of the Tacoma News Tribune reported that Wedge's voice could be heard outside the clubhouse as he chewed out the team. 

We're just four weeks into the 2013 season and Wedge already doesn't like what he sees from his club. While speaking with the media, he made a point to mention that several hitters were having bad at-bats, making it impossible to string together any sort of offense. 

Obviously, it wasn't supposed to be like this. The Mariners were expected to be improved this year, and not just because the Astros were now in their division.

I'm always amazed by what folks adept at technology can do with baseball GIFs and the new way to see cool things about the sport that go unseen by the naked eye.  This one from Reddit user DShep is just as mesmerizing as R.A. Dickey's knuckleball in slow motion.... and maybe even a little trippy.  5 Yu Darvish pitches shown as if they were happening at the same time.  It not only shows the incredible array of pitches Darvish has in his repetoire, but also just how hard it is to be a Major League hitter.

[Reddit] 

During Wednesday's Pirates-Phillies game, the much-maligned Domonic Brown made a catch in the top of the fifth inning that even his harshest critics had to respect. With none out, Pirates shortstop John McDonald hit a sinking liner to left field that looked destined to be a double. Brown got on his horse, stretched his arm to its absolute limits, and dove, somehow managing to bring in the McDonald fly ball and save Roy Halladay's bacon. The Phillies would go on to lose the game 5-3, but you can't point the finger at Brown in this one, who also went 2/4 at the plate in addition to making his incredible catch.

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NEW YORK – Though we’re just 20 games into the young season and temperatures in New York have struggled to surpass 50 degrees, Wednesday marked the official start of “All-Star Summer” in New York City. The Mets and Major League Baseball hosted a press conference at New York’s City Hall with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to announce the commencement of balloting (“Vote Early, Vote Often”) and to highlight some of the major initiatives around the 2013 Midsummer Classic to be played at Citi Field on July 16.

Joining Hizzoner for the festivities were Tim Brosnan, MLB’s Executive Vice President, Business; six-time National League All-Star third baseman David (“Captain America”) Wright of the Mets; and former Mets players (and current Club Ambassadors) Edgardo Alfonzo, John Franco and Mookie Wilson. Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz of the Mets also attended and Mets announcers Gary Cohen and Howie Rose facilitated a question and answer session with the players.

“Are they all going to help make it a great time?” Mayor Bloomberg quipped in his opening remarks before channeling his inner Tug McGraw. “Ya gotta believe!”

We've written way too many words about the closer situation in Detroit this year. But the Tigers finally pulled the trigger after three weeks of screwing around, and they reinstalled Jose Valverde into the ninth inning job on Wednesday. Of course, despite all of the warning signs Valverde showed last year, he threw a perfect ninth to save the Tigers' 7-5 win over the Royals. However, the outing wasn't perfect, as Valverde didn't record one whiff in his 18 pitches, didn't strike a batter out, and threw nothing but fastballs in his first inning of the season. You can't draw conclusions from one outing, especially one where the results were so contradictory of the process like yesterday.

PIC OF THE DAY

Diamondbacks shortsop Didi Gregorius gets upended by Brandon Crawford of the Giants.

Game of the Day: Diamondbacks 3, Giants 2 (ten innings). Arizona won a wild extra innings affair for the second straight day by the bay. The Snakes trailed 1-0 heading into the eighth, but AJ Pollock singled in Gerardo Parra against Madison Bumgarner to tie the game up at one. The Diamondbacks took the lead in the ninth after Parra rapped a single to left off of Jose Mijares, bringing in Didi Gregorius. With JJ Putz unavailable for Arizona, David Hernandez came on for the save, but Brandon Crawford sent the game to extra innings with a solo homer off of Hernandez. But in the tenth, a Wil Nieves sac fly off of Chad Gaudin brought Paul Goldschmidt home to put Arizona back on top. Matt Reynolds came on to finish the game off, and pitched around a two out double from Brandon Belt to record his second save of the season.

The Tigers have a bullpen problem. Not only have their relievers been largely ineffective, but now they are dealing with depth issues after placing Octavio Dotel on the disabled list. These struggles should come as no surprise because the Tigers had bullpen problems in 2012 as well. What will come as a surprise is that the Tigers seem to think that they can solve their 2013 problems by relying on a pitcher from their 2012 bullpen that was arguably their biggest problem. That would be the recently called up Jose Valverde.

As you might recall, the last time we saw Papa Grande, he was "closing" for Detroit in the 2012 playoffs, only he wasn't getting anyone out. He showed a marked decline in skills all throughout last season before finally cratering in October. As such, Detroit did the smart thing and kicked Valverde to the curb. That was where the smart moves stopped. Despite the loss of their closer and a bullpen already thin on talent, the Tigers did literally nothing to address their relief corps. They neither signed nor traded for anyone. Their apparent plan was to rely on rookie Bruce Rondon to close and maybe find some depth from a healthy Al Albuquerque.