By just about any metric there is, Michael Conforto is one of baseball’s elite talents at this point in the season. Conforto leads the NL in slugging (.750) this month, is tied for the most runs scored (24), is first in extra-base hits (15), is fourth in batting average (.355), tied for third in home runs (seven), tied for third in RBI (19) and second in on-base percentage (.467).
On the season, he is tied for third in the NL and tied for seventh in the majors with 13 home runs. Conforto also ranks third in the majors with a 1.149 OPS, seventh with a .437 on-base percentage, sixth with a .341 batting average and tied for sixth with 35 runs scored. You’d have to have a baseball IQ lower than Harold Reynolds to say that those aren’t All-Star numbers.
But thanks to baseball’s balloting system, Conforto is unlikely to start the All-Star Game. Since he wasn’t an Opening Day starter, Conforto’s name is not on the ballot, nor will it be added. This gives him virtually no shot to make the All-Star team, despite the fact that he’s been hitting at an extraordinary level through the first two months of the season.
Fans can still write Conforto’s name onto the ballot; the Mets have been pretty aggressively campaigning for their young outfielder by promoting the hashtag #WriteInConforto all over social media. But the odds of a write-in candidate making the team as a starter are between slim and none — just two write-in candidates have ever made the All-Star team as starters: Rico Carty in 1970 and Steve Garvey in 1974. This is not exactly a precedent the Mets, Conforto or anyone else riding the #WriteInConforto movement should be particularly optimistic about.
[iframe]<div style=”width:100%;margin:10px 0;”><iframe src=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/keLLil1D7V3″ width=”640″ height=”523″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” style=”position:static;vertical-align:top;margin:0 auto;display:block;width:640px !important;max-width:100%;min-height:523px !important;max-height:none !important;border:none;overflow:hidden;”></iframe></div>[/iframe]
Now that voting is done exclusively online, baseball should change its balloting to include those who were not Opening Day starters. This is obviously something that would have been difficult to do with the traditional print ballot, but the league has no excuse now that the ballots are online and can be changed. It is absolutely absurd that someone like Travis Jankowski, who boasts a solid .160/.263/.180 slash over 17 games is on the ballot while Conforto is not.
This honestly isn’t that big of a deal, though. Conforto — provided he can keep this level of production up — will probably be included as a final vote candidate or as a reserve. But if MLB wants to make the most of online balloting, it would be well-suited in utilizing all of its potential. And that includes making the ballots more malleable.
In the meantime, Conforto will need to continue to keep carrying the Mets– for both his All-Star stock’s sake and for the team’s. It hasn’t been a good season for the Mets, but Conforto’s emergence has been by far the greatest silver lining the team has witnessed all year. He’s looking every bit like the perennial All-Star the team was hoping to get when it took him in the first round of the 2014 draft.
