There's been a lot of talk about whether Yankees manager Joe Girardi was acting out of an anti-Red Sox bias when he named Paul Konerko to the All-Star team (replacing the injured Justin Morneau) over Boston's Kevin Youkilis. I have no idea whether that's true or not -- he didn't pick any Red Sox for the roster, but then the players had already chosen six, so that's hardly definitive -- but either way, I'd say there's a very, very good chance he was acting out of emptyheadedness. With his injury replacement selections, Girardi is doing his best to make himself look as clueless as Charlie Manuel.

The difference is bigger by FanGraphs WAR: Youk stays at 3.4, but Paulie drops to 2.1. And Youkilis has obviously been the better player for the last several years, so any considerations not related to the first three months come out Youkilis' way as well. Konerko's having a really nice comeback year, and there are probably a lot of years in which the kind of year he's having would be All-Star worthy. This isn't one of those years. Youkilis should've been on this team in the first instance (especially in a year when the focus is on positional flexibility, since he can also play third), and has a case to start over Cabrera. There's no way Konerko should be on the team ahead of him.

Then there's this. As Tom Tango noted yesterday, there have now been eighty-two players named to the two All-Star teams, and none of them has been this guy:

Felix leads all major league pitchers in innings, and has been about as effective as last year, when he finished second in the Cy Young voting. His "record" is just 7-5, but everyone knows he plays for a terrible team that can't score runs, and he leads the league in strikeouts and is 7th in ERA. It's not hard to figure out that this guy is an All-Star level pitcher.

He's also 4th in the league in (FanGraphs) WAR, behind Francisco Liriano (who isn't on the team), Lee, and Lester. Liriano is the best pitcher in the league right now, but I can understand why people don't realize that. Felix is a lot harder for me to get. There's no way to look at this and determine that Felix is any worse than, say, the seventh best pitcher in the AL right now, and he's probably a lot higher than that. Eighteen pitchers have been named to the 2010 AL All-Star Team at one point or another, and Felix isn't one of them. Girardi has had five chances to rectify his original mistake -- with the injured or otherwise ineligible Buchholz, Rivera, Cahill, Weaver and Sabathia -- and has not done so.

I'll say it again: there's just got to be a better way.