Good news for MartinHeads: The Dodgers' sophomore catcher Russell Martin has jumped to the top of NL All-Star balloting! Martin has now overtaken former Dodgers' backstop Paul Lo Duca, and is several hundred thousand votes up on Brian McCann, Johnny Estrada and Bengie Molina. Unless one of these guys goes on a tear in the coming weeks, I believe we'll be seeing Dodger Blue behind the plate at AT&T Park in July.

I was just listening to the Brewers get no-no'd by Justin Verlander and announcer Bob Uecker was talking about All-Star voting. Basically, he said the system isn't perfect, and he believes that the majority of votes go to the fans' home teams rather than to the most deserving players. I see his point, but can we really be surprised by the nature of the fan vote? Fans are fans because of numerous criteria other than, or in addition to, stats. For example, players with great smiles will get more of the chick vote, and guys who can really crush the ball will get a strong dude voter turnout. There's much more at play here than just performance stats, and so be it–the game belongs to the fans.

Obviously, Russell Martin's got a great smile and a crushing swing. Based on popularity or skills, there's no doubt in my mind that he should be a 2007 All-Star.

Now, can we round up some more votes for Prince Fielder? I'd love to see Pujols knocked out of contention for the 1B slot. 

Did I miss some recent news about Orlando Hudson? He's not even in the top 5 in 2B votes! That's just confusing.

This post was added on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 7:34 pm and is filed under All-Star Game . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.