The cliche: records are made to be broken. The codicil: depends on the records. In this case, who had the shortest major league shelf life before being placed onto his first all-star team.
Bad enough: the record entering this season was held by the Pirates' Paul Skenes and his 11 major league games when making his first all-star squad last year. Worse: the record now belonging to Brewers phenom Jacob Misiorowski — who was picked for the National League squad after (count 'em!) five major league games.
How brilliant is this, too: Misiorowski was named to take the place of Cubs pitcher Matthew Boyd — all 34-years-old and no previous all-star selections in his entire 11-year career to date. The only reason Misiorowski became a topic is because Boyd's regular rotation turn occurred Saturday against the Yankees, and Cubs manager Craig Counsell didn't want to risk Boyd — who has an injury history that didn't begin with his 2023 Tommy John surgery — running into trouble in an all-star appearance rather than going back to work for the Cubs on regular rest.
The Brewers brought Misiorowski to the Show a month ago. Over the five games to follow, Misiorowski has worked a 2.81 ERA, a respectable if not necessarily earthshattering 3.83 fielding-independent pitching rate (FIP), and 33 strikeouts in 25.2 innings, but a 0.90 walks/hits per inning pitched rate. As The Athletic's Eno Sarris has observed, Misiorowski "may end up testing our patience from start to start."
But when the projections and the stuff metrics are this good, damn the torpedoes; you gotta join in. Sitting around 100 on the fastball with great shape? A mid-90s slider? A 90 mph curveball? Metrics that scream 'young Jacob deGrom without command'? I'm in. I've always been in.
That's encouraging as a scouting report. It wasn't supposed to be an endorsement for all-star status just yet. And, come to think of it, there's been one proverbial fly in the Misiorowski ointment thus far: the Mets fanned his upstart behind for five earned runs in three and two-thirds innings on July 2.
That rough outing to one side, Misiorowski does look as good as his notices and does look to have a promising career ahead of him, so long as he can keep himself from arm, elbow, or shoulder trouble and develop some command.
Now, back to the all-star matter. No. He doesn't belong there yet. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Skenes at least had two months and six more games to show himself. What's going to happen next year, then? Will some team raise boy wonder Sweeper Whippersnapper up near the end of next June, watch him deliver in two games what Misiorowski has in five, and see him chosen an all-star over quite a few other pitchers who've shown from day one or close enough that they belong on the all-star team?
"The main goal of the Midsummer Classic is to recognize the players who have performed at a high level through the first half of the MLB season," wrote Yahoo! Sports's Russell Dorsey. "With that, it also allows fans to see the stars of the game they might not watch on a regular basis.
"But by adding Misiorowski to the NL All-Star roster, MLB has sent a message to players that not only does the game not matter, but performance doesn't matter, either."
Absolute fairness time: the message about the All-Star Game not mattering is older than Misiorowski. So long as there remains season-long regular-season interleague play, the All-Star Game means nothing near what it once meant.
Dorsey and others who want the Game to "mean" something should get behind efforts to reform the Game's selection process. But then those efforts need to be made in the first place. With things such as fan voting restricted to and strictly enforced as one-person, one-vote, one-time. Things such as the All-Star ballots themselves chosen by the statisticians at Baseball Reference, the Elias Sports Bureau, FanGraphs, Retrosheet, and Statcast, among others. Things such as only the top five players at each position in each league appearing on the ballots once the stat-meisters get the job of composing them. (Do you really think it was wise for MLB to have this year's ballots showing candidates from each team at every position whether or not the player[s] in question deserved to be there?)
"Selections to play in the All-Star Game should be based on merit and production from the season's first half," Dorsey continued.
The reality is that there will always be snubs. But this selection feels different than your ordinary snub.
At this point in the process, days before the All-Star festivities, it's a given that some adjustments will need to be made, with players injured, unavailable to pitch Tuesday or opting for rest. But adding a rookie who debuted a month ago, as opposed to going down the list to find a more deserving starter, sends the wrong message.
Dorsey suggested that, if Boyd needed a successor on this year's NL All-Star roster, it should have been Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez. It's not an unrealistic suggestion. (His fellow Phillies pitcher, Ranger Suarez, declined the honor because of the rest factor, too.)
"It's whoever sells the most tickets or has been put on social media the most," said Phillies shortstop Trea Turner. "That's essentially what it's turned into."
Marketability concerns are one thing. It's easy to say that excellence is the most marketable commodity. But you don't need me to tell you that baseball in the contemporary world, and under its current leadership, has a problem marketing excellence above and beyond the automatic marquee names.
Just don't blame Misiorowski for this. "He has done nothing wrong — quite the opposite — and he isn't responsible for his own selection," Dorsey wrote. "But sadly, he has now been put in an awkward position by the league at the center of a conversation he likely wishes he weren't part of." Contemporary MLB has become at least as good at putting people in awkward positions as Misiorowski's been on the major league mound so far.
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