Brandon Lowe was left off the National League All-Star team on Sunday even though he leads all major league second basemen in home runs and RBIs. That kind of omission is hard to explain by numbers alone, and it left one of the game's best first-half performers without the recognition his season would normally demand.
Going into Sunday's game at Washington, the Pirates were 45-45, 10.5 games out of first place and four games behind the last wild-card team. Paul Skenes said he was surprised to be the Pirates' lone representative for the All-Star Game, pending late adds, which made the roster news feel even narrower for a club that has spent much of the season fighting to stay in range.
Lowe's case is straightforward. He leads all major league second basemen in home runs by three and RBIs by six. He is also third among major league second basemen in runs, WAR and OPS. If selection were based only on merit, he would have been the Pirates' All-Star representative.
But the NL roster was not built on merit alone. It came from a mix of fan votes, player votes, manager selections and commissioner selections, and that is where a player like Lowe can get pushed aside. Ozzie Albies was voted in as the National League starter at second base by fans, while Luis Arraez was voted in by players despite batting.330. Andy Pages also got in as a Dodgers starter by fans. Brice Turang was snubbed at second base as well.
That is the part of the process that turns performance into judgment. Brandon Lowe can lead the position in home runs and RBIs and still lose the spot if the voting breaks toward star power, career resume, market pull or the rule that every team must have at least one representative. Joe Starkey put it bluntly: "The league, the fans and the players should be mortified by the Lowe snub." He added that Lowe leads all major league second basemen in home runs and RBIs and is third in runs, third in WAR and third in OPS.
Skenes' selection fits the same pattern from the other side. Starkey said he understands why Skenes is going because he is a star, and the players voted him in. Even so, the picture is awkward when Braxton Ashcraft was described as deserving All-Star candidate alongside Bryan Reynolds and Lowe, and Ashcraft's numbers in the same number of starts compared favorably with Skenes, including a 9-3 record, a 3.24 ERA, better WAR and more strikeouts than Skenes' 6-8 mark and 3.62 ERA. That is why the final roster feels less like a pure performance list than a compromise between production and profile.
The Pirates still have late adds ahead of them, and that is the only opening left for the roster to look less lopsided. For now, Lowe's absence is the clearest reminder that All-Star selections are a voting exercise as much as a merit award, and that this year's list at second base did not reward the best first-half numbers.
