Carlos Rodón has been one of the best pitchers in all of baseball this year. He leads the league in fWAR and FIP and is second in strikeout rate. He put the San Francisco Giants on his back when they absolutely needed it, firing a complete game against the rival Padres on Saturday when a loss would've put the Giants below .500 for the first time all year. Yet somehow, Rodón was not named to the NL All-Star team.
It's one of the bigger snubs in recent memory. Rodón absolutely deserves to be there, much more than Joc Pederson actually, but the politics of making sure each team is represented got in his way. It should make Giants fans and baseball fans at large wonder whether All-Star rosters are too small. Either that, or we need to stop making sure each team is represented. How is it good for baseball that Joe Mantiply is an All-Star and Rodón is not? D-backs fans might be happy about that, but that doesn't mean it's right. Clayton Kershaw should be an All-Star, but he hasn't been better than Rodón since he's pitched far fewer innings.
Regardless of the All-Star talk, Rodón's complete game was much needed by the Giants. He put the team on his back, and then they carried that momentum into Sunday with a resounding 12-0 win behind an excellent start from Alex Wood. The SF Giants' starting pitching could carry this team in the second half. Logan Webb also deserves to be an All-Star, though his case is more borderline. Wood and Alex Cobb have excellenet peripheral numbers which suggest that they should have better results than they've had to date. Wood showed why on Sunday. The offense also exploded, with Wilmer Flores hitting two homers and several other Giants having good showings at the plate. Hopefully the Giants can carry this into their upcoming series with Arizona and Milwaukee before the All-Star break.
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The best daily San Francisco Giants podcast. Whether the Giants are winning championships or retooling for another title run, Locked On Giants host Ben Kaspick—a lifelong Giants fan and former contributor for RotoGraphs and Beyond the Box Score—breaks down every game, rumor, and transaction in a way that's data-driven and rational but also simple, passionate, and accessible to all.
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