Late last night, Major League Baseball admitted to major issues pertaining to their new digital voting system. The sport that was once known as “America’s Pastime” made the transition from the traditional paper All-Star ballots to all-digital voting in April. This transition was an effort by the MLB to attract a younger demographic to the sport because of the vast loss of interest in the younger generation largely due to lack of change and pace of play.
At first the change appeared to be working well. Millions of votes were being cast online. But flaws have now been exposed.
The new digital voting methods were at first considered a success. Each fan could vote 35 times per email address and votes were coming in at record pace. But as it stands right now, the American League All Star team’s lineup consists of eight Royals players. Clearly, Kansas City fans are still excited about their team’s 2014 World Series trip and bombarded the voting for this year’s game.
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Due to the lack of censorship in voting, players such as Eric Hosmer are in place to start over the likes of Miguel Cabrera. “If I’m Miguel Cabrera, I’m looking at myself like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Hosmer said, “Miguel is a candidate and should be the starter.” Actions such as these have led to much speculation about the possibility of some votes being casted illegally. Initially, the MLB insisted that all of votes were legal, but as of this morning 60 million votes for the 2015 MLB All-Star game were canceled.
Even without the 60 million votes, this year’s MLB All-Star Game is going to set a record for most fan votes. They have already passed the 300 million mark and will soon blow by the 390 million record, according to Yahoo Sports.
Although, the MLB has canceled millions of votes, it does not fix the issue. Even though this system may be attracting more publicity, can we say this publicity is good for the sport if players who don’t deserve to participate in the All-Star game are voted in?
We recently saw this same problem with the NBA All-Star game with Kobe Bryant being voted into the starting lineup with a torn Achilles. Does this further cement the notion that online voting should be avoided by sports leagues, or should voting be taken away from fans in general and left up to “experts” to select the best players? After all, it’s a game that is supposed to display the leagues best talent and not the most popular players. There is a distinction.
At the very least, Major League Baseball should be commended for adjusting their All-Star voting techniques to try and skew younger. But clearly some tweaking is in order. Fans should only hope that the league doesn’t overreact and figures out a way to make All-Star voting represent the best players while keeping voting methods digital and therefore accessible to any fan.