Colorado Rockies: Who deserves an All-Star Game spot

On June 14, Major League Baseball released the initial All-Star Ballot results. The Colorado Rockies only had a single player appear in the Top 10 for their position, the seventh-place vote-getter, second baseman Ryan McMahon. As the voting stands today, the All-Star Game host city (Denver) would not have a single-player make the All-Star roster.

This, of course, isn’t really the case because of the MLB’s “every team gets a player rule,” ensuring every team gets a representative in the big event. This, however, could well be the first time since 2009 that the Colorado Rockies would not produce a starter. With that in mind, I looked at the data.

Are there any Colorado Rockies players who deserve an All-Star Game nod?

If so, what favorability can be expected because of the club hosting the game this year?

The Host Precedence

In order to see if my fears may be realized, I looked back through franchise history and see what happened to other host teams. Based on the data, things look good for the Colorado Rockies.

Since the Rockies’ first season, all but five host cities have seen more than one of their team’s players make their roster, the last one being Kansas City in 2012. The average All-Stars per host team? 2.56 players.

OK, appearing in the game is a given, but the All-Star Game is about seeing your favorite player’s name front and center. There are two principal ways to get this extra attention: Being a starter or being selected for the Home Run Derby. Either of these titles is a tremendous honor that raises the profile of your appearance from very good to the best of the best. So how much favor do host cities get in these categories? Not as much as you might think. In the past 27 All-Star Games, 33% (nine out of 27) did not feature a starter and 41% (11 out of 27) did not feature a Home Run Derby competitor from the host ball club.

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Interestingly though, it seems in some years they use these titles interchangeably. If there are no starters for the host club, then they may save a Home Run Derby spot for that team and vice versa. Only 19% (five out of 27) of the host clubs the past 28 years saw neither an All-Star starter or a Home Run Derby contestant the year of their game.

An important caveat to this is that three of these games happened in the 2010s, with the 2010 Angels, 2011 Diamondbacks, and 2012 Royals not having a single starter or Home Run Derby contestant on the final All-Star Rosters.

So, while unlikely, if a bad baseball team is hosting the All-Star Game, they are perfectly willing to admit when a host club doesn’t have anybody who fits the “best of the best” description.