4 Cardinals cruelly spurned from the All-Star Game in the past decade

2022: Tommy Edman

Fans are granted the privilege to vote for the position players who will appear at the All-Star Game, and though each player's stats are presented on the screen when someone goes to vote, many fans will make their pick based on name recognition. That's likely one reason that Tommy Edman was nowhere to be found on the list of All-Stars in 2022.

Through July 5, when the All-Star teams were revealed, Edman led the National League in WAR, defensive WAR and runs scored. He finished 2022 leading the league in range factor per nine innings as a second baseman. But with a relatively nondescript .263 batting average and seven home runs, voters who just took a quick glance at his stats failed to see the whole picture. Edman was also overshadowed on his team by the MVP-caliber performances of Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado.

Edman was undoubtedly more valuable in 2022 than Jake Cronenworth, a San Diego Padres second baseman who made the All-Star team despite hitting only .241 in the first half with an OPS of .729, marginally higher than Edman's .716. Cronenworth's defense was also far inferior to Edman's, making Edman's omission from the 2022 All-Star game a true head-scratcher.

2021: Tyler O'Neill

Tyler O'Neill's Cardinals tenure was one of maddening inconsistency and nagging injuries, but in 2021, he stayed healthy and put it all together. But while he finished the first half with a .275 average, a .546 slugging percentage, 15 home runs and a 133 wRC+, the All-Star Game proved elusive.

The plate wasn't the only place where O'Neill put up numbers. In left field, O'Neill recorded 11 defensive runs saved for the season and was four outs above average by the season's end. Yet instead of receiving an All-Star berth along with Nolan Arenado, Yadier Molina and Alex Reyes, he sat on the sidelines as the Los Angeles Dodgers' Chris Taylor made it in ahead of him, who owned a .452 slugging percentage and a 129 wRC+.

O'Neill finished the season with a .286 average and a .912 OPS, and he placed eighth in MVP voting. The Cardinals kept him on their roster for two more seasons, but he never came close to replicating those numbers again. Now with the Boston Red Sox, O'Neill has managed to produce when on the field. But health has always been the biggest obstacle for the outfielder, and it may prohibit him from ever reaching the heights he soared to in 2021.

2016: Seunghwan Oh

Some leeway must be given to fans voting for All-Star hitters since the vast majority of people don't delve deep into the statistics to choose a player. But when a deserving pitcher doesn't receive a chance to make an All-Star team, it's a more curious situation since pitchers are chosen via the players' ballots and the Commissioner's Office. That was the case for Cardinals relief pitcher Seunghwan Oh in 2016, who owned a sparkling 1.59 ERA in the first half but failed to receive the call to San Diego for the All-Star Game.

Oh, who had pitched in Korea and Japan under the nicknames "Stone Buddha" and "The Final Boss," was passed over in favor of bullpen arms such as Jeurys Familia and A.J. Ramos, who held significantly higher ERAs. However, Ramos and Familia had the luxury of being their teams' primary closers in the first half, a role that Oh wasn't given until after the All-Star break. The lack of saves undoubtedly hurt Oh's stock as an All-Star selection.

Oh finished sixth in National League Rookie of the Year voting in 2016, but he was unable to repeat his success in 2017, where he had a 4.10 ERA, and he later pitched with the Toronto Blue Jays and the Colorado Rockies before heading back to Korea after the 2019 season.

2015: Kolten Wong

Despite leading the National League among home runs by a second baseman, with nine, and being tied for the league lead in RBIs and extra-base hits by time voting closed for the 2015 All-Star Game, Kolten Wong was not selected as a Cardinals representative. The team did send a National League-leading five players to the game, potentially causing Wong to be overlooked.

Wong was hitting a strong .280 and held a 115 wRC+, but it wasn't enough to sway voters from instead selecting DJ LeMahieu of the Colorado Rockies, who had posted a 96 wRC+ and only four home runs while ranking seventh among NL second basemen in OPS. However, LeMahieu's .311 batting average made him stand out in the eyes of many voters.

Wong would go on to have several strong seasons with the Cardinals, but he never managed to make it onto an All-Star roster. Now a free agent at age 33, Wong has experienced a sharp decline since 2022 and hit only .183 last year. He might have run out of opportunities at the major league level.

The All-Star Game, at least on the batting side, is generally more about the players whom the fans want to watch play than it is about merit. The Cardinals have had plenty of All-Stars in prior years, but it still stings to know that there could have been even more redbirds on the field.