The 2026 MLB All-Star rosters came out Saturday, and the White Sox got one name on the list: Miguel Vargas. For a first-place club that has been one of the biggest stories in baseball, that felt light. The bigger miss was Davis Martin.
Martin has put together the kind of season that should get him on the plane. The right-hander is 9-3 with a 3.08 ERA and a 1.26 WHIP over 96.1 innings, and his 3.2 WAR trails only Vargas on the White Sox roster. For a former 14th-round pick, that’s not just a nice story - it’s frontline production for a division leader.
The obvious comparison is Kansas City’s Michael Wacha, the pitcher who got the nod instead. And to be fair, Wacha has a case.
He leads the American League in innings with 114.2 and in quality starts with 12, and there’s value in simply taking the ball every fifth day and giving a team length. If All-Star selection were only about volume, Wacha would be a clean choice.
But that’s not the whole job. Martin actually beats Wacha where it matters most: WAR, record, and ERA.
Martin’s 3.2 WAR tops Wacha’s 2.7, his 9-3 record beats Wacha’s 5-6 mark, and his 3.08 ERA is better than Wacha’s 3.45. Wacha’s edge is innings, not impact.
And Wacha wasn’t filling a roster spot because Kansas City needed a token representative. Bobby Witt Jr. won the fan vote at shortstop, so the Royals were already covered. Even so, the Commissioner’s Office still gave a 36-54 Royals team a second All-Star while the first-place White Sox got just one.
Martin’s case gets even stronger when you look past the raw road numbers. Away from home, he’s 4-3 with a 4.72 ERA.
At Rate Field, though, he’s been nearly untouchable: 5-0 with a 0.88 ERA in a hitter-friendly park. That’s where ERA+ tells the fuller story.
Martin’s 139 ranks seventh among AL pitchers and sits ahead of Ranger Suárez’s 128 and Wacha’s 119, both of whom made the team.
Timing also worked against him. Martin’s July 2 start in Cleveland went just 3.1 innings, he didn’t record a strikeout, and it came 48 hours before the rosters were announced. But one rough outing shouldn’t wipe out months of work, especially when he had already delivered in a huge spot by beating the Cubs with seven strikeouts and no walks.
Taken together, the choice is hard to defend. The All-Star staff went with the 5-6 pitcher with a 119 ERA+ from the worst team in the division over the 9-3 pitcher with a 139 ERA+ leading it. The numbers point in one direction, and they point there pretty clearly.
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