American League extends National League losing streak to eight

José Ramírez led the American League to their eighth-straight All-Star Game win last night. Like he’s had to do dozens of times already this season, he put his team full of scrappy underdogs on his back and showed why he’s the one making 15 times as much money as each of them.

OK, most of that prior paragraph is untrue. José did hit the night’s fifth farthest baseball, a 388-footer, but it was caught. Like most of his BABIP this season, it did not find a hole. This was his only at-bat of the night, but I wasn’t lying about the fact that his team won.

The voters, clearly obsessed with distance, gave Vladimir Guerrero Jr. the MVP honors even though he only bested José by 80 feet. Yawn.

• Shohei Ohtani picked up the #pitcherwin by virtue of his scoreless first that was followed by the AL taking a 1-0 lead in the top of the second. As much as voters assuredly wanted to desperately give him the MVP, he did not do anything memorable aside from that FO-GO-GO inning pitched.
• Nolan Arenado got to bat in the bottom of an inning at Coors, and the fans let their worse-than-Dolan owner know how much they missed him.

Around the league

• Dodgers president Stan Kasten’s remarks about Trevor Bauer were not appreciated by the league office.
• The Angels finally tried getting some pitching, using all 20 of their draft selections on throwers of the baseball.
• Cleveland almost did the same thing.
• Rob Manfred doesn’t plan on having seven-inning doubleheaders in the future (meaning he’ll blame the MLBPA if they stick around).
• And hopefully the runner on second in extra innings goes extinct as well.