There's a lot of grumbling about the fan voting for the All-Star game, and it's usually justified. In the end, though, they do about as decent a job as I think you can expect a massive group of heavily biased voters to do. This year, I think they did it just about exactly right. It came down to the final day for two potential travesties, but David Wright beat Placido Polanco and Justin Morneau held off Mark Teixeira, and all was well.

The real problem is putting the managers of last year's World Series teams in charge of picking the rest of the team. You hope that the fans' biases more or less even out (they don't, of course, but at least there's some kind of balance), but then for the bench players and pitchers, you're completely at the mercy of the biases of one guy.

And this year, as is the case in many years, the result is pretty disappointing. Yankee pitchers C.C. Sabathia and Phil Hughes have been above average pitchers this year and sit 16th and 21st in WAR, respectively, among the 53 qualified American League starting pitchers. They have high win totals, because they pitch for a very good team, but pretty mediocre ERAs. (The surprising thing is that Girardi didn't pick their teammate Andy Pettitte, who has about the same win total and underlying numbers but a much prettier ERA -- he's already indicated that Pettitte will probably replace Sabathia on the team). No Yankee pitcher has been nearly as effective this season as Francisco Liriano, who misses the team because he has just six "wins" and because he doesn't play for the manager's team, or Jered Weaver, who even has a sparkling 2.82 ERA but falls short by virtue of playing all the way over on the west coast (in the host stadium, coincidentally).

The bias isn't limited to the manager's own team; it also extends to the guys who tend to beat that manager's team. The Yankees have had a really tough time with the Blue Jays so far this year, so it shouldn't be surprising that John Buck, Jose Bautista and Vernon Wells all make the team, while the White Sox's Alexis Rios, who is far more deserving than either Jay outfielder but played in just one of the Sox' three games against the Yankees earlier this season, is stuck at home. (The Sox' lone representative is Matt Thornton, a very good middle reliever with a WAR one-half of Rios'.) [I realized after I wrote this that both Jays outfielders were selected by player ballot, not by Girardi. I forgot they even had one of those. But Girardi's still on the hook for C.C., and none of this helps the disaster below at all.]

Things in the NL are just plain ugly. One needs look no further than first base, where the most overrated player in baseball, Ryan Howard, was selected as one of two reserves at the position. Howard's .293 batting average would be his highest since 2006, but every other facet of his game is way off; he's got a near-career-low .349 OBP thanks to a career-low 7.5% walk rate, a carer-low .502 SLG, and is on pace for a career-low 30 homers. His defense has also fallen way off, at least according to UZR. He's 8th among NL 1Bs in WAR, making him right around average for a starter at the position.

The Reds' Joey Votto, meanwhile, is first among 1Bs and 2nd among all NL players in WAR. He's ahead of Howard in batting average, OBP, SLG, OPS, HR and runs, and is just two behind him in RBI. He even has 7 steals to Howard's 0 (though he's also been caught 4 times to Howard's 1) and leads all NL 1Bs in UZR, seven runs better than Howard. You could argue that Howard is being rewarded for his second half last year, in which Howard hit .305/.382/.621...but Votto hit .300/.399/.547, so for the last year as a whole, there's no question that Votto has been the better player. He's been the better player, in fact, since the day he arrived full-time in the league; Votto's 12.1 WAR since 2008 crush Howard's 8.9 over the same stretch. You can define "All-Star" in any number of reasonable ways, and under every single one of thom, Votto fits it a lot better than Howard does.

The NL All-Star Team is managed, of course, by Charlie Manuel, who also just happens to manage Ryan Howard's Phillies. He's been watching Howard do his thing all year, and while Votto did go 6-for-13 with two homers against Manuel's boys in a series less than a week ago, I guess Charlie wasn't paying attention.

Then Charlie went and selected Omar Infante, the Braves' second-best super-utility guy after Martin Prado, despite Prado and Tim Hudson both being named to the team. Infante's .309 batting average is pretty and all, but at 0.5 WAR, he's been about as valuable as Juan Pierre and Jason Kendall. I can only assume that Manuel remembers Infante's seven games against the Phillies (in which he's hit a pretty empty .353)...but then, I guess he's forgotten about Ryan Zimmerman's four games against them (.385/.429/.846)?

With these two picks, Manuel, much more than anything you might argue the fan vote has ever done, has made a mockery of the All-Star Game. Naming Howard and Infante in place of Votto and Zimmerman misses the mark by so far that it's a bit like putting together an all-time team and naming Mo Vaughn and Lenny Harris in place of Gehrig and Schmidt.

There's got to be a better way, right? Maybe let the players and coaches league-wide pick the reserves and pitchers? Maybe bar the manager from naming anyone from his own team (let other managers decide if any of that manager's guys belong)? Maybe finally admit that the All-Star game is a farce and no longer worth paying even a moment's attention to?

Yeah, I think I'll go with that last one.

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