Since the All-Star rosters were announced Sunday people have been arguing about who should and shouldn’t have made the team, with the focus often being on the biggest snubs. But who are the biggest All-Star snubs, in terms of never being picked for an entire career? Baseball-Reference.com recently added that sorting feature to its amazing “Play Index” and I crunched the numbers using a stat called Wins Above Replacement to find which players accumulated the most career value as zero-time All-Stars. Here’s the top 10 for hitters and pitchers:
HITTERS WAR PITCHERS WAR Tony Phillips 48.2 Tom Candiotti 41.0 Tim Salmon 37.6 Danny Darwin 37.1 Kirk Gibson 37.1 John Tudor 32.3 Eric Chavez 35.8 Bill Hands 31.8 Richie Hebner 35.2 Charlie Leibrandt 31.7 Garry Maddox 33.8 Jim Barr 30.5 Jose Valentin 33.7 John Denny 29.5 Dwayne Murphy 32.9 Fritz Ostermueller 27.6 Ken McMullen 31.7 Ellis Kinder 27.4 Earl Torgeson 31.5 Kevin Tapani 26.7
Some interesting names on those lists, but I think the clear lesson is that while there are plenty of regrettable snubs every season few great or even very good players fail to end up in the All-Star game eventually. If you’re curious, here are the same lists except with active players only:
HITTERS WAR PITCHERS WAR Eric Chavez 35.8 Doug Davis 22.1 David DeJesus 22.1 A.J. Burnett 21.5 Casey Blake 21.7 Aaron Harang 18.1 Travis Hafner 19.7 Erik Bedard 17.1 Mark Ellis 19.2 Darren Oliver 16.2 Mark Kotsay 19.0 Rich Harden 15.5 Adam Kennedy 18.1 John Danks 15.2 Craig Counsell 18.1 Octavio Dotel 13.9 Orlando Cabrera 18.0 Joel Pineiro 13.7 Lyle Overbay 17.0 Jeff Weaver 13.4
Eric Chavez and most of the other guys have missed their chance at this point, but John Danks and David DeJesus have played at an All-Star level this season and are young enough to be decent bets to make it eventually.
