How about an all-MLB team?

[skanar]

Posting about Chris Hoiles' career 0 All-Star games when he was almost certainly deserving of one got me thinking about the limited utility of career AS appearances as a way of evaluating players historically.

And the AS game has a lot of weaknesses in this respect: fans' votes are often for sentimental reasons (Cal's last game), managers' picks are sometimes questionable (hello, Cito), every team must have a representative, and the game is played when only about half the season is in the books.

I don't want to change the AS game itself; I think a lot of those rules that make historical numbers tricky are good ones for purposes of the game itself. And loath as I would usually be to suggest borrowing ideas from basketball, I think the NBA does this well: there's an All-Star exhibition game; then, at the end of the season, they select the all-NBA players, 1st team and 2nd team.

Why not do that in baseball as well? Reward the players who were the best at each position. Probably should have either an all-AL and all-NL, maybe 1 team per league, maybe 2. Or could just have 1st team all-MLB and 2nd team all-MLB.

I guess baseball isn't in especially dire need of another set of offseason awards, but people do use # of AS appearances when talking about HoF candidacies etc.

Thoughts?