LOS ANGELES — The problem with baseball is that, too often, your eyes betray you. Or at least, you can’t see the whole story. What you’re watching on the field is barely even the tip of the iceberg in a sport defined by large sample sizes and unexpected value that has to be quantified to be understood.
This renders the All-Star Game meaningless — I mean, it was anyway, and those of us who thought it was kinda cool when the outcome determined World Series home-field advantage know to keep that take on the down low — as a game and even on an individual performance level.