The all-star game roster is a traveshamockery for a lot of reasons from a Nats perspective. The final ballot pits Heath Bell, Carlos Gonzalez, Joey Votto, Billy Wagner, and Ryan Zimmerman against one another for a variety of reasons. Ryan Zimmerman is the face of my favorite team's franchise and he deserves to go more than Omar Infante at 3rd. But Joey Votto will be getting my vote. If you will bear with some rantish ravings after the jump, I'll tell you why I'm voting Votto.

1) I hope that you all can acknowledge that the process is deeply flawed. The please the fans stuff versus the players stuff versus the manager loyalty stuff versus the win the game stuff makes it hard to pick a consistent roster. The bottom line from a Nats perspective: the genius players picked Matt Capps who is not really that deserving on his own team. If I had name Nats who deserve to go, it would be Josh Willingham, Ryan Zimmerman, Adam Dunn, Stephen Strasburg, Tyler Clippard, and Matt Capps. Nat fans barely want to see Matt Capps in any of the 162 games scheduled. They'd rather see Storen and Clippard. And now we have to watch Capps?!?!?!? If it will help us sell Capps, to a stupid franchise like the horrific Mets bullpen I watched for 3 games in person this weekend, maybe Capps playing is a good thing. I'm off topic. Sorry.

2) Votto is a great player who is in the league leaders in all kinds of categories. He's second in WAR on fangraphs. And he still can't in.

3) Votto is a core piece in a team that has contending and exceeding expectaions. Hello? Don't we reward winning some time?

4) Votto has overcome personal struggles to achieve his success. His ability to fight through the issues of depression make a human being whose story needs to be told and needs to be given a greater stage to share with others about how he's fought through tragedy and mental issues to become an MVP candidate.

It's real frustrating visiting other boards. Self-congratulating Philly fans will probably give us some "to the victor go the spoils" nonsense and not acknowledge that their manager is an idiot for picking Infante and that Votto is having a far better season at a far more affordable price than Ryan Howard. Braves fans seem to think that Infante deserves to go, and that Billy Wagner deserves "one more run" at the all-star game. If he deserved one more run at the game, then Charlie Manuel would have picked him over some other reliever, like say, Matt Capps. Oh, but he can't do that. Well, then.

Anyways, I'm curious about Reds fans thoughts on the all-star roster, and I just wanted to encourage the knowledgeable baseball fans here to use this as an opportunity to check out some of the other communities on SBNation like Talkin' Chop and The Good Phight to see what they have to say on the issue. I appreciate your intelligence as baseball fans, and I hope that your man gets elected.

And after that I hope at least one of my guys, Willingham or Zim gets named as an injury replacement.

Good day, and have fun stormin' the Central.