Picking the best possible 25-man All-Star Game roster for the NL

SI MLB writer Albert Chen looks at which member of the Chicago Cubs' infield could have been left off the National League All-Star team.

From 1933—the year of the first major league All-Star Game—through '97, the roster sizes for each side in the Midsummer Classic never topped 28 men. Starting in '98, when MLB’s latest round of expansion increased the number of teams to 30, the size of the All-Star squad began to balloon: to 30 that year, 32 in 2003, 33 in '09 and 34 in '10.

The result has been a game filled with more and more players who don’t deserve to be called All-Stars. Starters and reserves for this year’s game, which will be held at Petco Park in San Diego, were announced Tuesday, and…