There’s been a lot of hostility directed Tony La Russa’s way for all of the NL All-Star snubs this week. Really, though, it’s the fans as a whole that made things more difficult than they needed to be by voting Dan Uggla, Rafael Furcal and Pablo Sandoval into the starting lineup.
The Braves tonight dropped the slumping Uggla down to the seventh spot in their lineup. He hit .160 in June and is off to a 1-for-16 start in July. Overall, he’s at .225/.355/.394 for the season.
In defense of the fans, Uggla probably was the NL’s most productive second baseman through the first two months of the season, and many ballots were cast in May. However, even though Uggla was outhitting Brandon Phillips and Aaron Hill, he was still a worse player overall after factoring in defense and baserunning.
The move to drop Uggla to the seventh spot comes nearly a year to the day after he broke out of his career-worst slump. Uggla was hitting .173 on July 4 last season. On July 5, he went 2-for-2 with a homer in kicking off a 33-game hitting streak.