Which Diamondbacks Most Deserve Your All Star Vote?

The Phase 1 ballots are out for the 2023 All-Star Game to be played in Seattle on July 11th. Diamondbacks fans have a chance starting today to vote for their favorite players. Some fans enjoy ticking off the name of every D-back on the ballot. If you're one of those fans, kudos to you, the team needs more fans like you!

Some fans like to vote for the biggest name stars they recognize and most want to see in the game, regardless of their team affiliation or how they are doing in the first two months of the season. That is a completely valid way to view the All-Star game as well. After all, should a one player's hot month or two of 2023 out weigh years of All-Star caliber performance of another, especially when filling out a ballot six weeks away from the actual game?

So as not to bury the lead, the most deserving players on the Diamondbacks so far this year are Corbin Carroll, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., and Geraldo Perdomo. Ketel Marte is not too far off either. We'll get to the reasons why at the bottom of the article. If you are already a "stat savvy" fan, and especially have a grasp on modern metrics, you can skip to the bottom and just view he table. But if you'd like to learn more, please continue reading.

Many fans like to pore over the statistics and create rankings by whatever criteria they value most. The ballot includes some basic traditional stats, such as batting average, homers, and RBI. It now also includes OPS, which is on-base plus slugging percentage. This is a step in the right direction, because the correlation to team run scoring is much higher with OPS than it is with batting average. In fact when comparing B.A., OBP, SLUG, and OPS, the latter has the highest correlation to team run scoring of all. This has been proven out over multiple studies throughout the years, such as this one and this one just for a couple of examples.

I've long held the view that while we shouldn't ignore batting average completely, as it tells us something about the hitter, it should no longer be the first stat listed in a hitters batting line. Personally, I like to take it a step further and use metrics such as OPS+ and wRC+. These metrics take league average and park environments into account. After all in some years MLB scoring average is in the low 4's, and other year's it's near 5 R/G. For example, 2014 was a low point for offense, with just 4.07 runs per game being scored and a league average OPS of just .700. Just five years later in 2019 he league scored 4.85 R/G on a .758 OPS.

How does this affect the leaderboards? In 2014 a .900 OPS ranked 7th in MLB. In 2019, a .900 OPS ranked 29th. What about 2023 ? We are more or less in the middle, with 4.58 R/G and .729 league average OPS. A .900 OPS ranks 14th.

At the same time, as we discussed the other day, ballparks play differently. The same OPS put up at Coors Field and Petco Park do not have the same value, due to the vastly different hitting environments.

Fortunately, you don't have to look up or memorize league averages and run environments and ballpark factors. Both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs have created easy to use and understand "plus" metrics that do the heavy lifting and give you a simple number to reference. These numbers on a 100 scale, with over 100 being above average, and under 100 being below average. OPS+ is created by Baseball Reference and the National League players can be found HERE. Fangraphs creates wRC+ and you can find the NL leaders at this link.

Both of these website also create a WAR metric, or Wins Above Replacement. War measures batting, but also measures base running and fielding, and credits or debits players for the difficulty of the defensive positions played. (Catcher and Shortstop receive the biggest bump in the positional adjustment while DH and first base take the biggest hits). Showing up is important too. Players that post up and play every day get additional replacement runs. After all, health is a skill too.

Sometimes there is a big variance between the WAR metrics created by the two websites. Usually, but not always the difference can be traced back to the way defense is measured, and also to the park factors uses. Baseball reference uses Defensive Runs Saved, (DRS) created by baseball info solutions. Fangraphs uses Runs Above Average, (RAA) which is based on Baseball Savant's Statcast data metric of Outs Above Average, or OAA. You can see the DRS and RAA columns on the same page here for comparison.

What I've done in the table below is use the average of the two WAR metrics, which is referred to as aWAR. I did the same thing for OPS+ and wRC+, and I also show the average ranks in each metric within their respective positions.

Perdomo being at the top of this table won't be a shock to D-backs fans that watch most games. His defense at shortstop has been terrific and up until the last two or three weeks he's been the hottest hitter on the team. He still leads all shortstops in both OPS+ and wRC+. He's not a "qualified batter" due to lower plate appearances, as he's platooned with Nick Ahmed. So he won't show up on many of the league leader boards, but he's been one of the top shortstops in the league so far this year.

Corbin Carroll's all around game has him among the top outfielders in the NL. Not just among the top rookies, but among ALL outfielders. Lourdes Gurriel Jr's. rise through the ranks with his outstanding month of May at the plate has lifted him into the national eye and into the top three outfielders in most batting metrics.

Ketel Marte's numbers and ranks lag the other three just slightly, but a few weeks from now he could easily be at the top of this table. He's gotten on base in 28 consecutive games and has played solid baseball since a slow start the first couple of weeks.