The 2025 Major League Baseball All-Star game will take place on Tuesday, July 15th in Atlanta, Georgia. The starters for the game were named earlier this week after the fan vote was completed. Today the rest of the team was announced, as voted on by the players and decided by the commissioners office. Managers no longer get to pick players for the teams.
Cincinnati doesn’t have anyone in the starting lineup (at least at this point). But they did land one player on the team – Elly De La Cruz. The shortstop is heading to the All-Star game for the second season in a row.
The Reds best position player, De La Cruz has stepped up his game at the plate so far in 2025. In his 89 games player he’s hitting .279/.352/.491. All three portions of that slash line represent what would be career highs. He’s hit 15 doubles, two triples, and a team best 18 home runs. He’s also added in 22 stolen bases to this point in the season.
The strikeout rate for De La Cruz has come way down this season. He struck out 33.7% of the time as a rookie in 2023. Last season that dropped to 31.3%. But in 2025 it’s all the way down to 25.3%. And he’s done that while keeping his walk rate nearly identical to where it was in 2024.
Joel Luckhaupt pointed out on Bluesky earlier today that with his selection to the All-Star team, Elly De La Cruz is the first Cincinnati Reds player to make multiple All-Star games before his 24th birthday since Johnny Bench and only the 4th Red to ever do so. Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson also did so.
Left off of the team was Andrew Abbott. There were a handful of starting pitchers who have a great argument for inclusion and the Reds lefty is one of them. He’s made 15 starts and thrown 83.2 innings. Abbott is 7-1 on the year with a 2.15 ERA, 22 walks, and 78 strikeouts. Among pitchers with 80 innings, his ERA ranks 2nd in the National League – trailing just Paul Skenes.
It’s still possible that someone else could be named as a replacement, but we’re going to have to wait and see how that unfolds over the next week.
Comic Book Reds Hero Andrew Abbott should have been on the team. This is shameful.
East coast, west coast, Cubs. Thats what gets you on the all star team. Freidel deserved to be on this team, at least as a sub, Pagan too. But who gets it. The glamour boy PCA. No doubt he is a great player, but Freidel is arguably almost as good.
Friedl is so good that fans of his own team can’t even spell his name right.
Friedl has a 1.9 WAR on baseball reference and 2.0 WAR on fangraphs.
PCA has a 5.0 WAR on baseball reference and a 4.6 WAR on fangraphs.
Friedl is not “arguably almost as good”.
Sorry, disagree. right now PCA is the darling of MLB Tv etc, etc, deservedly so. I did not say as good, I said almost. Sorry I misspelled. My bad. boo hoo.
Nothing at all suggests that Friedl is almost as good. PCA is playing at an MVP level. Friedl is not, has not. He’s having a good season. This is like saying that Nick Martinez is almost having as good of a season and Zack Wheeler.
Congrats to Elly. He’s deserves the accolades.
Abbott and Friedl got hosed. Not surprised though.
What a joke that Abbott wasn’t named to the Allstar game.
I’m fine with him resting up and getting ready for the 2nd half. He always seems to run out of gas in August.
So do I.
I agree with both MBS and C13J.
He might be showing signs of wearing out already.
Glad to see De La Cruz make it of course, really surprised Abbott not on the team. I see Gore from the Nationals made it with a 3-8 record and almost point higher ERA than Abbott. He has a slightly higher WAR and has pitched 20 innings more, maybe that’s why he makes it over Abbott?
Every year their are snubs but Abbott’s seems a little surprising to me.
ASG rosters are a joke, which is why I don’t watch the game and don’t care who is on the team. Until MLB finds a way to have voting fairly distributed across all teams, it will remain crossed off my list.
Because Gore was the Nationals team only All Star, he was selected by the commissioners office and every tram had to have an all star. So that bumped Abbott out.
Except that Gore is not the only National. James Wood is going.
Congrads to Elly De La Cruz on the All Star Game. Disappointed that Abbott not selected for the All Star Game. Their is a Randy Rodriquez on the Giants that was selected. Giants already have two other pitchers on the All Star roster. Abbott has a better overall record than Rodriquez, but since MLB is all about big market teams, such as the Dodgers, Giants, Cubs, Phillies and Padres, most players selected come from these teams.
All Star games are jokes. Best thing baseball could do is name guys All Stars, do some skill comps and never play another game.
Barry Larkin blew out his elbow during the skills competition back in 88 and they shut it down after that.
Kirk Gibson. You may remember him, mostly from 1980s. ZERO All-Star Game appearances.
Vada Pinson. 1961 was arguably his best season. NOT an All-Star that season.
I once knew the somewhat odd list of MVPs who were not All-Stars that same season – believe Gibson was the last of those. I suppose there’s a “hot post ASG selection” aspect, but really?
He played 17 years. His OPS+ career was about 125. Well above average.
Abbott got robbed. The Nationals rep should be James Wood. 4.4 WAR, OPS just under .950 and an OPS+ of 167. Leave Gore off and give Abbott the spot he’s earned. I don’t normally care how many Reds make the team but every once in a while someone has a great first half and perhaps their only shot at an all-star nod. In that case I do want our guys to get recognized. Looking at you Zack Cozart. Somebody call Joey Votto – absolute minimum Andrew Abbott needs a donkey.
old fan here. EDLC reminds me a lot of Vada Pinson. classic 5 tools player plus very durable. rarely sits a game like Vada
Abbott missing the team just goes to remind us of what we already know – baseball’s voting awards rarely have to do with how good a player is.
I think that doomed Abbott is he’s currently a non-qualifier (he’s a few innings short), so when people sort for starting pitcher stats (among qualfiers), his low WHIP and excellent ERA are not going to show up.
Fans did not vote on the pitchers. Player voting selected 5 starting pitchers and 3 relievers for each league. The remaining pitchers were selected by the commissioner’s office.
Even as well as Abbott has pitched, the top five in the NL is a reach for him. My *guess* would be he eventually got squeezed out when a pitching spot was needed as the sole representative of another team. Note that EDLC was locked in from the Reds as a players’ choice.
Here is an annotated roster list that indicates how all the NL pitchers were selected.
* (Choice of MLB)
^ (Player-elected pick)
Jason Adam ^, SD (1st All-Star selection)
Matthew Boyd *, CHC (1st)
Edwin Díaz ^, NYM (3rd)
MacKenzie Gore ^, WSH (1st)
Clayton Kershaw *, LAD (11th) — “Legend Pick”
Freddy Peralta *, MIL (2nd)
Robbie Ray *, SF (2nd)
Randy Rodríguez ^, SF (1st)
Chris Sale ^, ATL (9th)
Paul Skenes ^, PIT (2nd)
Logan Webb ^, SF (2nd)
Zack Wheeler ^, PHI (3rd)
Yoshinobu Yamamoto *, LAD (1st)
https://www.mlb.com/news/2025-mlb-all-star-pitchers-reserves-complete-rosters
Here is a link explaining the selection process:
https://www.mlb.com/news/all-star-game-roster-rules-faq-c239654292
Hard to argue with the player picks.
Suzuki leads the league in “Arby Eyes”
Soto .904 OPS 22 HRs
Trea Turner leads the league in hits.
No soup for you!
As much as I like TJ Friedl, those guys are even more deserving.
It probably did not help Friedl that he had a .714 OPS over the last 4 weeks, which dropped his seasonal OPS from .834 on June 14 to the current ~.780 (depending on when the players voted and final MLB decisions were made).
Plus, it is not just the raw offense numbers. The Reds outfield defense has not been stellar over that same period, with Friedl in the middle of some questionable outcomes.
These factors were probably magnified in the player voting since many out of division and AL players were seeing him in person during the selection run up.
I stopped watching the All Star game when they went to inter league play. Just took the shine off of it for me. Watching top pitchers from each league face off against top hitters that each rarely faced was exciting. Now, meh. Now it’s just pomp, politics and prattle.
The fewer Reds selected the more rested they are. Only thing bad is some players do get bonused. given our payroll, younger players would really benefit if selected.
@SR>>> I am pretty much where you are on the All Star Game. For a while when I was a kid, it helped to fund the player pension fund. Those days are long gone with MLB’s contribution negotiated in CBA.
And yes, those individual matchups of AL and NL guys before interleague play were interesting.
Now, maybe they could just shut down for 5 days for the players to regroup and replay the video of some all time classic games. Maybe a different World Series every year?
I think what hurt Abbott is the fewer innings he’s pitched compared to the league leaders. Yes, the ERA is stellar, but he’s also pitched in what amounts to 6 or 7 fewer games.
The all star selection process is a complete joke. Especially since they started allowing internet voting. So congratulations to Elly, I guess.
The big difference between Bench and EDLC is that Johnny finished his career with the Reds and that’s extremely unlikely to be the case with EDLC.
I am 59, and I still get excited watching the ALL STAR game, (although, its the only one I watch anymore). I still love looking at the batting orders, and all the stats, I still get excited to see my players in the lineup, and I think, they are going back to having each player with his team jersey, which I love.
DOES ANYONE THINK A CURRENT MAJOR LEAGUE PITCHER WOULD LISTEN
TO GREG MADDUX WHO HAS STATISTICS LIKE THIS?
From 1988 to 2001, Maddux demonstrated incredible durability by pitching over 200 innings in 14 consecutive seasons. During this period, he averaged 238 innings per season while maintaining exceptional efficiency and never suffering a major arm injury.
Maddux averaged just 13.4 pitches per inning throughout his career, the lowest rate of any starting pitcher since the statistic began being tracked. His efficiency peaked in 1997 when he threw a complete game against the Cubs using only 76 pitches.
As his career progressed,he was getting two inches either side of the plate. He was a great pitcher, with very good control, but he got a lot of strikes called that weren’t strikes. This certainly kept his pitch count down as there were a lot of takes on pitches off the plate that were called strikes.
Gore is among league leaders in strike outs, fans like to see power vs power