The Phillies Are in an Exclusive Club of All-Star-Studded Teams
MLB's best team at the break claims more than a fifth of all NL All-Star spots.
Being named to the MLB All-Star Game is a special honor that players will share with their families and remember for the rest of their lives.
But this year, it’s also just going to feel a lot like a regular game for the Philadelphia Phillies.
That’s because Philly has a co-National League record eight players going to the midsummer classic, after pitcher Cristopher Sanchez was named as a replacement for Chris Sale over the weekend. The Phillies’ eight All-Stars are tied for the most by any MLB team since the New York Yankees had nine in 1958 — meaning it also ties for the most of any team in the Divisional Era (1969-present), a period after MLB was done experimenting with multiple All-Star Games each season and the like.1
Now, the number of All-Stars per season has been increasing since the 1990s (due to everything from injury replacements to expanded rosters) But there’s a group that still underscores exactly how much representation Philadelphia has at the event: The 21 percent club.
Since 1969, only 18 teams have claimed at least 21 percent of all the spots on their league’s All-Star team, even after the various adjustments for injuries, etc. While the Atlanta Braves also did it last season, it’s something that doesn’t happen every year: Before the 2023 Braves, it had happened only once in the previous 15 years (with the 2012 Texas Rangers, a team whose fans infamously stuffed the ballot box).2 So it’s a pretty exclusive club.
How did things tend to work out for these star-studded teams in the past? Three of the 18 won the World Series — the 1993 Blue Jays (against the Phillies, ironically enough), 1976 Reds and 1970 Orioles — while the 2001 Yankees lost the title and five more went to the LCS but fell short.
Others, such as the 1978 Red Sox — who would eventually become victims of Bucky Dent’s home run — missed the playoffs entirely despite sending so many big names to the All-Star Game. But that was in an earlier era before postseason expansion. The last member of the 21 Percent Club to miss the playoffs was the 2002 Red Sox, who blew a wild-card lead over the Anaheim Angels in the second half.
With an all-but-certain playoff probability in my composite odds model, that fate will probably not befall the Phillies this season. And they’ve earned their place in this club anyway: Philadelphia’s current league-leading Elo rating of 1558 is slightly above the average for the group overall, in terms of how the team is playing at the break.
There is the eternal question of whether we should pick All-Stars based on their first-half performance versus their previous track records — a factor that has been trending toward the former in recent decades, probably to the benefit of Philly All-Stars like Sanchez, Jeff Hoffman, Alec Bohm and Matt Strahm. But it’s another data point suggesting that, in a somewhat wide-open season for championship odds, we should be taking the Phillies seriously as one of those teams — the ones whose dominance becomes synonymous with the season when we look back on it in the history books.
Filed under: Baseball
Yes, back then they had two All-Star Games per season! Now it’s a real debate as to whether we should even have ONE.
Although we would not yet begin to know All-Star ballot-stuffing until the mid-2010s Kansas City Royals came along, god bless ‘em.