as usual, jayson stark takes things 5 or 6 steps too far

resident espn number cruncher stark recently wrote a column about who the best NL shortshop has been so far this season (and thus should be picked as the all-star game starter). the premise being, of course, that many of them have played very well thus making it difficult to choose. an interesting enough topic for an article. stark brings up jj hardy, jose reyes, hanley ramirez, and jimmy rollins. good, great, grand. theres youre whole article and discussion, right? wrong. rather than quit while hes ahead, stark goes buck wild and basically roll calls every single guy eligible.

And we haven't even touched on a fifth shortstop who is batting .331 (Edgar Renteria).

actually a very good choice, maybe better than rollins, but dont you think its getting a little crowded here? jayson, maybe you should just take it easy, get up, walk around, not write anything for a little while. (imaginary jayson stark, drunkenly slurring his speech in my brain: "ILL TELL YOU WHEN IVE HAD ENOUGH!")

Or a sixth shortstop (Rafael Furcal) who just ripped off three straight four-hit games.

currently OPS+ing 97, whereas the first five guys are all over 120 (and all but rollins are over 140). but sure, lets decide the all star team based on 3 games in may.

Or a future Hall of Famer (Omar Vizquel),

sadly, this actually is often a good all-star qualification from the fans' perspective. anyone with a brain, however, knows hitting .247 with a .290 OBP should not get you into the all star game. im pretty sure stark has a brain.

your incumbent World Series MVP (David Eckstein),

comically irrelevant. he's also OPSing a shade under .600. but just because jayson brought him up, im raising the lunchpail alert to yellow. (it had been down to green for just a few hours there.)

two rising stars (Troy Tulowitzki and Stephen Drew),

neither of whom is close to being an actual star yet.

a guy with seven home runs (Alex Gonzalez)

and an OPS+ of 101.

or three of the the best defensive shortstops on earth (Adam Everett, Khalil Greene and Jack Wilson).

all the guys on this list are some of the best defensive shortstops on earth. really says something about these three that this was the only nice thing stark could think of to say about them.

So go ahead. Fill out your ballot. You can't go wrong.

i would say: you can't go wrong, as long as you pick reyes, rollins, renteria, hardy, or ramirez. i picture stark shouting out this list to his fellow espn writers howard dean-style, naming them rapidly in a frenzied tone. that would be funny.