Royals (and Trout) vs the NL
- Thread starter soxhop411
- Start date
How are the Royals fans able to do this? Sure, they are stuffing the ballot box, I get that, but was there some type of effort or marketing involved that just worked here? Otherwise every year, the team with the largest attendance before the voting ends could also get something like 8 of their players on the team. But I don't recall this ever happening before (or recently, or to the extent we see here).
HillysLastWalk said:
The thing is that most fans don't really care, and at the stadium you can basically vote infinitely (it's not like they stamp your hand with each ballot you put it).
The danger for MLB is that there's a snowball effect here - as soon as it became clear that it was somewhat succeeding, even more Royals fan joined in, which made the voting ramp up even faster, which then encourages even more fans to join in (and conversely makes fans of other teams not really care as much)... and if you can get 30k people at a game to each put 10 ballots in you can build a huge lead really fast.
Now, I guess it's possible that there's some Royals fan that figured out how to punch 10k ballots at once or something, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it's legitimate.
moondog80 said:
My guess is that some of the 2nd-place guys mysteriously and conveniently gain about half a million votes between now and the end of the voting and nobody will ever be the wiser.
You're allowed to vote "up to 25 times" each online. Can't even complain about stuffing the box, MLB encourages it. They want to be able to say "look how many total votes for our All-Star game!" and voting multiple times helps that.
I don't know if this was in previous years, but this year the voting page only shows players for your favorite team. So in past years if a Royals fan went to vote they'd be at least forced to look at the stats of the top few at each position first. A few of them might say "Okay, I love the Royals but Infante really doesn't deserve it." Now the default option is just to see his name and no one else. That might contribute.
I don't know if this was in previous years, but this year the voting page only shows players for your favorite team. So in past years if a Royals fan went to vote they'd be at least forced to look at the stats of the top few at each position first. A few of them might say "Okay, I love the Royals but Infante really doesn't deserve it." Now the default option is just to see his name and no one else. That might contribute.
I know Red Sox fans are disenfranchised right now, and that in the end, an All Star game appearance isn't THAT important, but how is Xander Bogaerts not in the top 5 in voting? He's third in wRC+ in the AL and neither Semien nor Miller have much of a lead on him (both at 106), he leads in OBP, and is tied for the lead in wOBA. There is no objective measure by which you can make a credible claim that he's not a top 5 shortstop in the AL right now.
Snodgrass'Muff said:
Because this has nothing to do with how good players are and has not for at least a decade and a half (and probably longer).
I would have voted for Bogaerts but when I got an e-mail asking me to vote I opened it up and it only showed me the option to vote for Red Sox players. I couldn't bring myself to vote for the vast majority of them so I just closed it. I'm sure you can click somewhere to let you see other candidates to vote for, but I didn't bother.
soxhop411 said:
Wow, really? Huh, my mistake - I guess it's been longer than I thought since I've been to a game around all star voting time.
jmm57 said:
Last time there was a ballot stuffing controversy was 1957 when 7 Cincinnati Reds and Stan Musial were elected to start. Ford Frick launched an investigation, found the source of the ballot stuffing (Cincinnati Enquirer was printing pre-selected ballots and distributing them to fans), then inserted Willie Mays and Hank Aaron into the lineup to "balance" things out.
Fans lost the right to vote for the ASG for 13 years after that.
It is so dumb. I decided I might as well fill out a ballot on MLB.com, but I didn't fill out any information beforehand. You vote by position for each league at a time, so my first choice was AL 1B and it showed everyone's stats. As soon as I clicked on Miggy, the NL side of the ballot changed, all of the stats disappeared and it highlighted Adrian Gonzalez, like the MLB REALLY wanted me to vote for him. Why did it jump right to Adrian Gonzalez because I voted for Cabrera? I went back and changed my pick, but this time nothing happened, the ballot just looked normal with all of the stats displayed for the NL side. Weird.
After one click, mlb.com shows me i can vote 35 times.
After filling the first ballot (with only Cubs, Royals+Xander), I can click on SUBMIT AGAIN and after a 5digit code, i can submit the same lineup 35 times!
After about 5 minutes, it says "Congratulations! You have voted 35 times from this email adress!"
(If you only had a small group of 100 people, each did this from 3 different emails for 5 minutes (35votes) this is about 10.000 more votes for each single player you chose..let´s do this for Xander!)
After filling the first ballot (with only Cubs, Royals+Xander), I can click on SUBMIT AGAIN and after a 5digit code, i can submit the same lineup 35 times!
After about 5 minutes, it says "Congratulations! You have voted 35 times from this email adress!"
(If you only had a small group of 100 people, each did this from 3 different emails for 5 minutes (35votes) this is about 10.000 more votes for each single player you chose..let´s do this for Xander!)
So is this all new this year?
-- No All star ballots in the stadiums
-- Default is to vote for only players on your favorite teams
If Royals win nearly all positions, maybe they will change the second one for next time.
What a joke!
-- No All star ballots in the stadiums
-- Default is to vote for only players on your favorite teams
If Royals win nearly all positions, maybe they will change the second one for next time.
What a joke!
caminante11 said:
The idea that MLB would actually promote the idea of blindly voting for all your favorite team's starters instead of thinking of worthy candidates is nauseating. MLB fandom is already largely provincial; they don't need to encourage even more ignorance of the league and stars around the league for fans. Whatever bozo in marketing thought this up deserves to be taken out back and shot.
And then, beyond even encouraging it, they make it as easy as clicking a single button link on a team's website to fill in a ballot with just players from that team, and submit it 35 times.
I can't vote from my iPhone because the Captcha box is empty. Oh well. I guess the Royals just missed out on my 35 votes.