Batting Around: Who should have been the American League's All-Star legends pick to pair with Clayton Kershaw?

Commissioner Rob Manfred only made one selection this year

Throughout the season, the CBS Sports MLB experts will bring you a weekly Batting Around roundtable breaking down pretty much anything. The latest news, a historical question, thoughts about the future of baseball, all sorts of stuff. Last week we debated the All-Star Game starting pitchers. This week we're going to pick an AL counterpart to Clayton Kershaw as the NL's legends All-Star.

Who should have been the American League's All-Star legends pick?

Dayn Perry: He's far from his vintage self these days, but I'll go with 40-year-old Max Scherzer of the Blue Jays. He's a three-time Cy Young winner who's also among the active pitching leaders in WAR, strikeouts, innings, and wins. He'd pair nicely with NL legends pick Clayton Kershaw, and this would give Scherzer nine All-Star selections for his career. If we were a few years down the line, I'd go with Mike Trout, but he seems a bit young for this particular honor. 

R.J. Anderson: I think the most obvious answer is Max Scherzer. Unfortunately, he's pitched in only four games to date and I can understand if that complicated matters. My real pick, then, is Mike Trout. I know, I know, that sounds nuts. But he's nearing his 34th birthday and it's clear that his durability is a big-time question mark heading forward. The reality is that nobody knows how many more good years -- or, heck, how many more healthy years -- Trout has left to his credit. Selecting him for this year's game may have been premature -- and that's probably why it didn't happen -- but he deserves his flowers and some at a future date.

Matt Snyder: I think it's extremely odd to have just Clayton Kershaw here and not include Max Scherzer on the AL side. And if we're saying it doesn't have to be even -- the same number of legacy players on each All-Star team, like when it was Albert Pujols on the NL and Miguel Cabrera on the AL -- then why not also loop in Justin Verlander? These three feel tied together as the greatest pitchers in their generation and, in fact, are the three best pitchers of the 2000s. They are all reaching the end of their careers and there's been plenty of overlap. Kershaw and Verlander each won their first Cy Young in 2011. Scherzer won his first in 2013, the same year Kershaw won his second. Kershaw won Cy Youngs in three out of four seasons between 2011 and 2014 while Scherzer won three out of five seasons between 2013 and 2017. The only pitchers to win MVP since 1992 were Verlander and Kershaw. Only 11 pitchers have ever won three Cy Youngs and that includes Kershaw, Verlander and Scherzer (and no one else more recently since 2004). I know Kershaw just went past 3,000 strikeouts, but Scherzer and Verlander were already there. 

The only way it makes sense, to me, to have only Kershaw from this group of three here is if the other two turned down invitations and/or Kershaw quietly told the commissioner's office he was retiring after this season (along with, again, declinations from Scherzer and Verlander). 

Mike Axisa: Yeah, Scherzer is the obvious pick here, though waiting a year and looping Scherzer and Verlander together next All-Star Game would make for some nice symmetry given the way their careers have intertwined. (What if they sign with teams in the same league next year though? Hmmm.)

Trout's a good pick by R.J., but I kinda feel like the legends thing is a "this guy will never make the All-Star Game otherwise" honor, and I'd like to think Trout will make another Midsummer Classic on merit at some point. He's only 33, he's still pretty darn good even if he's not peak Trout anymore, and he's signed through 2030. Calling him a legend now seems a bit premature. If you want to take a position player, the AL pick would be, uh, Giancarlo Stanton? Not many great position player options in the Junior Circuit.

I'm going to say Charlie Morton, who has pitched pretty well lately: 2.97 ERA in seven starts since rejoining the rotation on May 26. The All-Star Game is in Atlanta this year and Morton has strong ties to the Braves. They originally drafted him way back when, he made his MLB debut with them in 2008, he returned for four productive years from 2021-24, and he was part of their 2021 World Series-winning team. That's a nice storyline. Morton is 41 now and it feels like he's gone year-to-year for the last six years now. This might be the last chance to make him an All-Star legend.