Giants get four All-Stars

If I told you before the season that the Giants would get four All Stars, you probably wouldn't be that surprised. If I then told you that three of those four were position players who were voted in as starters and the one All-star pitcher wasn't named Lincecum or Wilson, you might spit out your coffee in shock.

The craziest part is that all four players might have made the team even if they weren't voted in by the fans.

Melky Cabrera is currently 3rd in the NL in batting average and 10th in OPS, so it would have been a travesty if he was left off the All-Star roster.

While Buster Posey -- with his National League record-setting 7.6 million votes -- isn't having as good of a season as fellow catchers Carlos Ruiz or Yadier Molina, the lack of quality first basemen in the NL (Brian LaHair from the Cubs is the only other NL All-Star first baseman) might entice the coaches to take Posey because of his first base abilities, thus giving the NL team a more deserving player to be a backup first baseman than, say, Freddie Freeman.

Pablo Sandoval is having a decent year but missed over a month due to injury, so his All-Star candidacy is a little harder to defend. However, besides David Wright and (arguably) David Freese, it's hard find any NL third baseman who's been better than Sandoval this season (the 2012 NL is bad).

So, based on the seasons Cabrera, Posey, and Sandoval are having and the (lack of) competition they have in the NL, it isn't that crazy that these three made the All-Star team. (You know what is nuts? Brandon Crawford almost became the NL's starting shortstop. Brandon Crawford!!!). Just not many people at the beginning of the season would have predicted all three of the these guys being this good and popular.

Tell someone before the season that Matt Cain would be an All Star? About as surprising as Kim Kardashian telling you she's dating a professional athlete. While Cain's ascent into arguably being the best pitcher in the game has been a little unexpected, we always knew he had that potential. He might end up being the All-Star Game starter for the NL (although it will probably be R.A. Dickey), which would mean four of the nine NL starters would be Giants. Not since 2002 have the Giants even come close to that many starters.

Credit has to go to the Giants fans, many of whom used all 25 votes on multiple email addresses, for the three Giants position players becoming All-Star starters. For Posey to set the record for NL votes, Sandoval to pass Wright (who plays in the colossal market of New York), and Cabrera to lead all NL outfielders in votes took a huge effort from Giants fans. It's not like Posey, Sandoval, or Cabrera are huge stars, so it's obvious that the only way for those three to pass up bigger-name players like Molina, Wright, Kemp, Braun, and Beltran was from Giants fans and their gigantic voting efforts.

I'm excited to see these four Giants next week in Kansas City, and hopefully the national audience will learn more about these players who have performed so well out here in San Francisco.