The 2025 MLB All-Star rosters have been revealed after a few rounds of fan voting and voting by the league team’s coaching staffs and Commissioner’s Office, we have the initial rosters for both the American League and National League teams. In a return to tradition, all of the fine ball players selected to play(and chosen as replacement players for those unable or unwilling to play in the game) will be wearing the home or away jerseys of their teams rather than wearing the absurdly designed All-Star uniforms that Nike has been creating for the past few years for merchandise sales to fans. So, this All-Star game in Atlanta, Ga at Truist Park promises to bring nostalgia back while honoring the best players in the game along with honoring some Braves legends living and deceased.

With the starting lineups announced on Wed. July 2, there were no players from my favorite team in the (Anaheim) Los Angeles Angels selected to be a starter. Mike Trout came the closest, but he barely lost out on the fan vote due to there being one guy already in as a starter due to having the most fan votes among American League position players and the two remaining outfield spots were taken by two players on the same team that has restored their “roar” since August of last year. Aaron Judge was the guy who clinched the automatic starter’s vote in the AL and the two remaining outfield slots were filled by Riley Greene and Javier Baéz, who have both put up good offensive numbers in this season so far playing for the powerful Detroit Tigers. With Trout not voted in as a starter(shocker!), he would certainly get in as a reserve outfielder, right? Well, I’m fixing to tell you that was not the case at all.

The Trout Drought in the Millville Meteor not appearing in the All-Star Game has gone back to 2019, when he was the starting center-fielder on the American League team in the Midsummer Classic played at Progressive Field in Cleveland, Oh. But the 2020 All-Star Game didn’t happen due to the coronavirus pandemic and Trout did not appear in any of the following three All-Star games that he was voted into due to injuries that kept him from playing in those games. Trout was there in Denver, Col, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and Seattle, Wa., as the main attraction from the Halos that appeared in those games was good ol Shohei Ohtani, who recently celebrated his 31st birthday with a start on the mound for the Dodgers. Trout was voted in as a starter all three times, but injuries kept him from playing in any of those games. In 2024, Trout suffered a season-ending meniscus tear in April, so he wasn’t even considered for the All-Star Game vote last season. This year, as Trout has transitioned away from being a center-fielder, he has played in games as a right-fielder and designated hitter(the latter more often than the former). Trout landed on the injured list at the end of April with a knee injury and spent pretty much the whole month of May on the IL. Trouty returned at the end of May and tried regaining his groove while being a DH. The Angels have nixed any plans to return Trout to playing out in right field in order to keep his bat in the lineup for the rest of the season. God forbid the injury bug ever bite him again, but I guess the baseball gods can’t protect all of their idols. Even though Trout has not played defensively out in the field since April, he was placed in the All-Star ballot that opened in June as an outfielder candidate, something that people were used to seeing out of Trout in the first dozen-plus seasons of his career. The DH candidate for the Halos was Jorge Soler, who was supposed to platoon in and out of right field and the DH spot with Trout but those plans have changed due to him being hurt and the team wanting to protect their star player.

The first vote occurred over the course of a few weeks and when it closed, Trout had made the cut into the top-five outfielders. The other candidates he was grouped with for the two available starting positions in the AL outfield were Greene, Baéz and Steven Kwan of Cleveland. Judge was already automatically in as the top vote-getter in the American League, so there were four guys vying for two spots. As I already said, Trout did not get in as a starter, which meant his fate was no longer in the hands of voting fans throughout the country. It was in the hands of the coaching staff of the American League All-Star team and the Commissioner’s Office, which said that it was prioritizing that every team would have at least one player on their roster representing them at the All-Star Game. This isn’t something that any other major sports league does due to limited spots on the rosters or a lack of talented players on a bad team. But MLB does it so that every fan base can be pleased to see their team’s jersey being represented at the Midsummer Classic(an odd name considering that summer meteorologically starts in late June and doesn’t end till late September, but tell that to the kids, right?). So, naturally Trout would be selected as the only Angels player to make the ballot cut, right? Wrong!

Yusei Kikuchi has had a good season pitching for the Halos so far and with his lowered numbers for ERA and WHIP since early May, he was deemed worthy to gain an All-Star invitation as a pitcher choice. Meanwhile, due to the complicated situation of the “every team must have at least one player” doctrine, Trout was snubbed from being an All-Star due to Byron Buxton gaining a selection as the only Minnesota Twins representative and Steven Kwan getting in over Trout in spite of gaining less of the fan vote. The only other backup American League outfielder that was chosen is Julio Rodriguez, who has been a more elite and available center-fielder than Trout has been over the past few seasons. Younger members of my generation and the older members of Gen Alpha(Sigma, if you’re asking me) have looked up to J-Rod as their hero while Trout is nothing more than an old man that plays too late at night for those in the Central and Eastern Time Zones to watch before they go to bed. That’s the same for Rodriguez, but since he’s younger that gives him the edge of appealing to the younger generations. Millennials are getting so old, aren’t they? Aren’t we all?

So, Trout was left out, but he wasn’t the only deserving Angels player(and outfielder) that could have broken the mold into being an All-Star member. Kenley Jansen could have made his return to the All-Star game as a reliever choice, but due to his lack of save opportunities for the Halos he was snubbed in favor of Josh Hader, Andres Muñoz and Aroldis Chapman. Due to Kikuchi’s good pitching run as well, Jansen was left out but he could always get back in due to the amount of starting pitchers selected that opt not to pitch due to their starts occurring in the weekend days before the All-Star game on Tuesday. No, I’m talking about Jo Adell, who has been on an offensive tear over the last month plus, Adell has improved his stats in HRs, batting average and RBIs along with runs scored and on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Adell ranks among the top hitters in the American League and all of baseball since the beginning of June in those stats that I just mentioned. He has risen his batting average by over eighty points from his low point in the first quarter of the season. All of this while he has taken on the mantle of being the new main center-fielder for the Angels in grabbing the baton from Trout. But since he’s not that popular and plays on a mediocre team on the West Coast, no one outside of SoCal cares about Adell. He probably did not crack the top-10 of outfielders in the American League voting. But his stats have been just as good(if not better) than Judge, Greene, Baéz, Kwan, Buxton, and Rodriguez since the beginning of June. Being healthy and available is an extra bonus for Adell, which could put him above Trout in any potential discussions for replacement position players on the AL team.

But why are we kidding ourselves? None of the Halos’ worthy positions players have had a fair shake so far. Taylor Ward is another worthy candidate in leading the team in RBIs and being among the top hitters on the road this season(he’s not as good at the Big A), but his average is in the tank when compared with other batters. Zach Neto had a late start to the season and wasn’t able to keep up with other worthy shortstops in the AL like Bobby Witt Jr and the surprising Rookie of the Year candidate Jacob Wilson. Nolan Schanuel has good hitting numbers, but hasn’t been able to get those numbers to an elite level like Vladimir Guerrero Jr, Paul Goldschmidt and others. And Logan O’Hoppe has been in a rut since mid-May and every catcher in the AL has been overshadowed by the incredibly historic season that Cal Raleigh has had. So, Adell was the most-deserving candidate and Trout was the most likely based on the popularity contest that the All-Star voting process has become due to the power of the internet and smartphone access for basically every fan in the United States.

There is still a slight chance for one of them to get onto the All-Star roster due to the specter of injuries occurring to players voted onto the team in the week leading up to the All-Star festivities. One guy on the American League roster as a reserve is on the injured list currently with a recent injury. That would be Houston Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña, who was awarded with his first All-Star selection on Sunday. Peña landed on the IL with a rib injury on Jun. 28 and he might not return in time before the All-Star break. If he is unable to participate, a potential non-shortstop reserve candidate might be selected due to Jacob Wilson and Bobby Witt Jr being the main two shortstops on the American League roster. One of the snubbed candidates in the American League that made the Final cut for the starter’s vote might be chosen. This is where Trout and Paul Goldschmidt could come into play since they made the final cut and were not chosen, plus there could be an extra spot for them at their respective positions due to the lack of depth. But there are other worthy candidates who didn’t make the final cut at different positions and that does include the shortstop position. Wilyer Abreu of the Boston Red Sox, Jake Meyers of the Astros, George Springer of the Toronto Blue Jays and Cody Bellinger of the Yankees are worthy outfield candidates that could deny Trout or Adell that open All-Star roster spot. There are also a couple of other ways that Trout could have made the All-Star roster at this point in time.

He could have been placed into the DH pool and would have received more votes than most of the DH candidates in the AL pool. This is especially true after Rafael Devers, the initial lead vote-getter among DHs on the AL ballot, was traded from the Boston Red Sox to the San Francisco Giants on Jun 15. Devers was leading in the AL ballot among DHs until Boston traded him and then Ryan O’Hearn took over the lead for AL DHs and held it through the starter’s vote, which he won over the Yankees’ Ben Rice to be the only representative from the Baltimore Orioles to make the All-Star roster. But Trout would be the most popular DH of them all if enough fans voted for him. I would bet that Trout’s overall vote total in the outfield ballot was higher than the votes that O’Hearn received and Trout could have been the starting DH if he was in a starter’s vote race with O’Hearn, who could still be on the AL roster as a reserve in order to fill the O’s player spot. Oh well, one of these years Trout might transition to being a full-time DH and be placed in the DH pool for future All-Star ballots.

Another way that Trout could have gotten onto the All-Star roster is as a Legends selection. That would probably only apply if enough people think that he’s playing the last season of his career or if he’s close to that point. That was the case with Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera, who were chosen as Legends selections to both All-Star teams in the 2022 MLB All-Star Game. Albert retired after that season and Cabrera played his final season one year later. This same predicament was used to put Clayton Kershaw on the NL All-Star team, which has Dave Roberts as its manager. Kershaw just achieved a milestone that nobody else might ever achieve again among starting pitchers in eclipsing the 3,000-strikeout mark on Wed. Jul, 2 in front of his home crowd at Dodger Stadium. So, the timing is fitting for Kershaw, who didn’t make his season debut until May 17 against the Angels. Kershaw has been worn down by injuries in recent years and he most recently appeared as an All-Star as the starting pitcher in the game at Chavez Ravine in 2022. Many people have been expecting Kershaw to retire for a few years and now that he’s been a part of a couple of World Series title teams and achieved the final mark that can cement his Hall of Fame legacy, retirement seems like more of a realistic option for the 37-year old southpaw hurler after this season. As for Mike Trout, he still has a few years left on his mega contract and is in no way near the end of his career, so having him as a Legends selection wouldn’t qualify for this All-Star contest. But Trout is still considered by many as the best position player of his generation. He’s the active leader in Wins Above Replacement in spite of his many injuries and missed games along with his recent usage of being a designated hitter. Insanely enough, Aaron Judge is only eight months younger than Trout but he didn’t emerge as a star until the 2017 season whereas Trout was five years ahead of Judge, who played college ball unlike Trout. So, if we are talking about age of ballplayers only and not the length of a player’s career, maybe Judge has surpassed Trout as the best overall ballplayer of the middle-to-late Millennial generation of players.

Unfortunately, Trouty has been worn down by injuries over several consecutive seasons and his offensive numbers have been hampered by missed time and younger pitchers who are able to get him to strike out more easily than in his earlier seasons. Trout still draws full counts in almost every at-bat and has a high walk percentage due to that fact. His baserunning isn’t as elite as it used to be, but he still has the potential to run at standard high speeds. He’s just not as popular since he failed to stay healthy while Ohtani was his teammate and performing at peak levels that have raised the bar for greatness. The numbers that Trout has put up in his career are commendable, but they could be on a higher trajectory if not for all the time that he’s missed. He has yet to make it to the 400-HR mark, being only eight home runs away from it after hitting a solo blast against the Blue Jays on Sunday. With 14 HRs and 32 RBIs and runs, those are substandard numbers for Trout, whose batting average is way below .250. So, from a numbers perspective Trout doesn’t really qualify. Missing a month of games hurts his cause as well. So, the Trout Drought continues and he might never make it back to the peak level that he attained in the first eight seasons of his career where him being in the All-Star Game was a guarantee as long as he was healthy. That’s the point, though. People have moved on from Trout, seeing him as a broken-down relic rather than a living star. More young players are making the cut onto the All-Star teams and that’s what people want to see. The future of the game. Not the recent past when games took forever to be played, pitchers and hitters could lollygag all they wanted to without being penalized for it and pitching changes could be made without any restrictions whatsoever. The game has changed, especially with the stupor of analytics being used to break down how these star hitters make their craft look so easy. Trout’s career began before StatCast and many people think that’s a long time ago. But I don’t share that sentiment. For me, StatCast is a recent arrival fueled by analytic freaks with nothing better to do regarding the game of baseball and an annoyance only fueled by its primary sponsorship of Google Cloud. The only escape from StatCast is watching Spring Training games. Broadcast crews don’t use StatCast for those games, but for every other game it’s a fabric of their analysis. Totally annoying and unnecessary for a fan who only cares about their team winning and not about the stats that make pitchers and hitters successful. At least Angel Stadium seems to avoid StatCast as much as possible, it’s more of a TV thing than a game-entertainment thing. The only stat that hardcore fans care about other than the ones shown on the scoreboard is how far a home-run ball traveled. Other than that, StatCast is like a baseball version of advanced math, a class that many fans would flunk.

Now let’s be reasonable here. Trout isn’t the only main All-Star snub. The same goes with Adell and Jansen. Other key snubs across both leagues include the richest man in baseball right now in Juan Soto, the RBI leader for this season in Seiya Suzuki, four healthy members of the defending World Chumps, and plenty of other worthy young and veteran stars. So, for those who have a complaint that not enough of their favorite team’s players didn’t get voted into the All-Star Game, most other fans would say “Get in line, dude!” As usual, some of the snubbed players find their way onto the rosters due to injuries and pitchers not being available to pitch in the game. So, there is a waiting list of snubs waiting to see if something happens and they get lucky enough to be a replacement player. It happens with virtually every All-Star contest across pro sports. Heck, for the NFL, players who were chosen for the Pro Bowl that end up being on a team that goes to the Super Bowl have to be replaced and that’s like almost 15 spots combined between both Super Bowl teams. As for baseball, it’s clear that the voting system is rigged in favor of fans who decide to game the system and vote as many times as they are allowed to per day in the first round. It’s almost like a virtual version of ballot harvesting/stuffing and that could encourage election fraud in actual political elections. So, I don’t condone the ability to vote the maximum amount of times per day. Knowing that this was the case, I voted a few extra times for some of the Angels players that I wanted to make the All-Star roster(even for a couple of unrealistic candidates) on a couple of days. But it just got too tiring for me to do that. I guess it’s easier doing that on a laptop computer than it is on a smartphone. Oh well.

I guess that I welcome this situation of very few Angels making the All-Star team due to my recent disapproval of the aerial moniker for the Halos. Having to hear “Los Angeles Angels” instead of “Anaheim Angels” or “Orange County Angels” kind of bugs me a bit. So, it’s kind of bad juju for me to do that, but I don’t care. I’ll continue to disapprove of that until an actual change is made to the aerial moniker again, which might never happen as long as they stay in SoCal. There’s just too many Orange Counties in this nation and too many people would be confused by that name change. At least those living in the states that have an Orange County. Plus a large audience would think that name would sound way too “minor league” for the big leagues. Well, fancy this: The Los Angeles Angels team name was used for a Triple-A ballclub that the Chicago Cubs had back in the early 20th century(before the current Angels were founded as an expansion franchise). So, if you ever want to use the “minor league” argument, just go back in time and look at all the old fancy teams of teams throughout organized pro baseball in the good old days. You’ll find a lot of outdated names there. I can name at least a few “minor league” sounding MLB team names off the top of my head. Does Tampa Bay Rays sound minor league to you? Cuz it sure does to me. How about the Texas Rangers? Minnesota Twins? Team names based on cultural markers in specific areas, now that’s something that minor league teams do for their team names! Anyway, I’m done with that rant and I miss the good old days of Bud Selig saying “Los Angelees(that’s how it sounds out of the mouths of Americans that can’t speak Spenglish) Angels of Anaheim”.

There are a lot of big stars in this All-Star Game, as there are for every Midsummer Classic. From Aaron Judge to Shohei Ohtani to Vladimir Guerrero Jr to Paul Skenes to Ronald Acuña Jr and Pete Alonso. There are a lot of great players competing in this 95th playing of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. There is also the Home Run derby and Jo Adell could opt to compete in that given his recent surge. But the derby is a cautionary tale and there’s a reason why Trout doesn’t compete in it. The players that go into the deeper rounds usually suffer a drop-off in their power numbers in the first few weeks after participating in it and a team as a whole could suffer due to that. Maybe that will happen to Cal Raleigh and the Seattle Mariners in his insane HR tear. Either way, the HR Derby has surpassed the All-Star Game itself in terms of popularity and when that happens, the product suffers. Fewer cities are willing to host an All-Star Game, but really it’s up to the teams to decide if they want to host the game at their ballparks.

Truist Park is getting its dues in hosting the game after they were robbed from doing so because of a misunderstanding of a Georgia legislative voting law that was viewed by the media and the Democratic Party as “racist” and “oppressive”. The citizens of Georgia said otherwise and due to that the Braves got the All-Star Game back for this season after being stripped of it in 2021. Coors Field reaped the benefits of that and robbed the city of Atlanta of financial benefits that come with a big event like the MLB All-Star Game. Plus it would have been the perfect opportunity for the Braves to pay tribute to two of their recently-deceased legends in Henry “Hank” Aaron and Phil Niekro, who passed away in the offseason of 2021. They will still have that tribute I think, just a few years later. Those two were definitely the pure definition of All-Stars for their entire baseball lives. So, the MLB All-Star Game will occur on Tues. July 15 at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET in the ballpark in the Cobb County area of Atlanta, Ga. Whether Mike Trout or Jo Adell are on the American League’s roster at this point is unknown, but if they are I will definitely provide an update story to this one. It’s also unlikely that Kikuchi will be pitching in the All-Star Game because he is slated to pitch on the Saturday before the game. In the interest of resting his arm after pitching twice in the same week, Yusei might opt out of playing in the game. But it’s only his second time being selected as an All-Star, so we shall see if he participates or not. If he doesn’t, it will be a repeat of last year’s All-Star contest for the Halos, as their only representative in the 2024 game at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Tex. was Tyler Anderson, who didn’t make an appearance in the game due to the pitching schedule that he had gone through before the game. So, fingers crossed that’s not the case again. If it is, I won’t be surprised. It will only continue a trend of misfortune that the Angels have been cursed with in this decade filled with them. Let’s hope luck is on the Halos side, especially as they try to stay strong in the playoff chase in the American League heading into the All-Star break.