John's 2014 MLB All-Stars

By request, I created my own MLB All-Star teams. I was asked to judge from a "reward the best first half" perspective--I have no particular ideological bias towards this or towards the "pick who you think is the best player" school of thought. This isn't an explainer--if anybody has anything specifically to ask or just comment upon, I welcome it. I just don't feel like saying "he's good" in 68 different ways. With the bench and non-starting pitchers, I listed alphabetically because I didn't spend a ton of time differentiating guys unless they were on the bubble.

American League

Starting Lineup:

RF Jose Bautista

CF Mike Trout

2B Ian Kinsler

1B Edwin Encarnacion

DH Victor Martinez

LF Alex Gordon

3B Josh Donaldson

C Salvador Perez

SS Erick Aybar

SP Felix Hernandez

Bench:

C: Yan Gomes, Derek Norris

1B: Jose Abreu, Miguel Cabrera

2B: Jose Altuve, Robinson Cano

SS: Ben Zobrist (on the ballot as 2B but is a capable SS)

3B: Adrian Beltre, Lonnie Chisenhall, Kyle Seager

OF: Adam Jones, Brandon Moss

SP: Yu Darvish, Corey Kluber, Jon Lester, David Price, Max Scherzer, Masahiro Tanaka

RP: Dellin Betances, Sean Doolittle, Greg Holland, Andrew Miller, Glen Perkins, Koji Uehara

National League

Starting Lineup:

LF Andrew McCutchen

SS Troy Tulowitzki

1B Paul Goldschmidt

RF Giancarlo Stanton

C Jonathan Lucroy

DH Yasiel Puig

CF Carlos Gomez

3B Todd Frazier

2B Dee Gordon

SP Clayton Kershaw

Bench:

C: Evan Gattis, Devin Mesoraco

1B: Freddie Freeman, Anthony Rizzo

2B: Daniel Murphy, Chase Utley

SS: Jhonny Peralta, Hanley Ramirez

3B: Matt Carpenter, Anthony Rendon

OF: Billy Hamilton, Hunter Pence

SP: Johnny Cueto, Zack Greinke, Ian Kennedy, Stephen Strasburg, Julio Teheran, Adam Wainwright

RP: Aroldis Chapman, Steve Cishek, Zach Duke, Kenley Jansen, Craig Kimbrel, Pat Neshek