Yesterday we gave you a roundup of the Cardinals’ contribution(s?) to the NL All-Star team that will take on the DH-loving junior circuit squad a week from today. There has been a significant upgrade since then at the backup to the backup catcher position.

As I told you yesterday:

Kind of surprising omission: Despite an excellent bounceback campaign with the bat, and perhaps partly due to an extended DL trip with an “unspecified traumatic groin region” injury, Yadier Molina was passed over. Looking at the leaderboards though, Willson Contreras has irritatingly been a bit better than Molina across the board, and commissioner pick J.T. Realmuto has been far better than any other catcher in baseball this year at basically everything. (The player’s ballot pick of Buster Posey over Molina is an affront to human decency, and I don’t really want to talk about it.)

(emphasis added). Turns out my feigned outrage was all for naught:

Posey is allegedly nursing a bruised hip, but sources tell me that he really gave up his spot after an acute attack of conscience forced him to admit that Molina deserves it more this year.

This will be Molina’s 9th trip to the All-Star Game, proving that there is at least some justice left in the world.

In other news, it’s not too late to vote for Matt Carpenter to join the NL squad, too! This whole thing is undeniably a pointless popularity contest, but it would be nice to see our perennially underappreciated, quirky, fun 1B/2B/3B get a little recognition at a time when he’s producing like the NL’s Mike Trout.

Even though the All-Star Game is (probably rightfully) maligned as a massive waste of effort between completely arbitrarily selected players and a needless injury risk to boot, I have reason to believe that the players consider it a great honor to be recognized as performing at a level among the best in their league. And like all the internet’s ginned up controversies, this one is far overstated–I’d rather see Carpenter get a little morale boost and miss a day of rest in the middle of a 5-day span of rest than ignore giving him a shot. So if you’re on the fence about this, take off your grumpy internet baseball expert face, have a little fun, and join me as I #VoteCarp!