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I know Fox-TV is trying to force the United States of America to celebrate "Baseball Night In America", with five TV games (only two of which anyone outside the local markets cares about), but I cannot think of a worse time to make the announcements of this year's All-Star teams than 5:30 p.m. Central time, Saturday of a holiday weekend.
Who's watching TV then? That's right, hardly anyone. And it's happening while several games, including the Cubs' 4-1 win over the Pirates, were still in progress. Thus anyone at one of those games (like me) or anyone watching those games (fans of eight teams) were likely not tuned to their local Fox station to find out who made the All-Star teams.
Requisite Fox-bashing now over, I'll move on to write about Travis Wood's selection as the Cubs' sole representative to the 2013 National League All-Star Team.
It's a well-deserved honor, because Wood has been the Cubs' most consistent starter all year. He has 16 quality starts in 17 total starts, and though the QS isn't the best measure of a starting pitcher, the one non-QS is the only start all year in which Wood hasn't gone at least six innings. He's allowed two runs or fewer in 11 of the 17 starts, allowed four hits or fewer in nine of them, and gone seven innings or more in six of them.
Wood is currently scheduled to start Tuesday against the Angels, which would mean he's the likely starter for the final game before the break, a week from Sunday against the Cardinals. If he makes that start, he might not be available to pitch in the game, but he'll surely make the trip to Citi Field anyway. Hey, the guy's a good hitter and good athlete (he played outfield in college as well as pitched) -- maybe N.L. manager Bruce Bochy could use him as a pinch-hitter or pinch-runner.
Congratulations to Wood, who right now makes one of Theo & Jed's first trades -- the Sean Marshall deal -- look really good. If he keeps up this sort of performance the rest of 2013, I'd hope the Cubs would try to extend his deal into a multi-year contract over the winter.