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I don't care about the All-Star Game. It is a ho-hum event for me, a parody of a baseball game, and its outsized impact on the World Series hurts my soul.
But I want to care. Honest, I do.
Here's my proposal:
Let fans vote for a representative at each position. This player will often, but not always, deserve to be the starter. The manager makes that decision. 8 position players, a DH in AL parks, 2 starters and a reliever.
Players select a representative at each position, to the same positions as the fans.
A computer program uses a secret algorithm (a weighting of wRC+ and Dewan +/-... yes, I know that the calculation to those stats are publicly available, but since it's a "new" stat, it'll be reported as a secret algorithm a la the BCS) to determine the best remaining player at each position from last All-Star game to current game.
That's 36 players, 9 pitchers and 25 fielders, 3 men deep at every position. Should be enough to get through a 9 (or even 11!) inning game.
And most importantly, we're rewarding the players on their performance for the year- not a calendar year, of course, but at least it's a larger sample than 2 months.