Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game.When the All-Stars line up along the baselines in Philadelphia July 14, nearly all deserving players will be there. Every summer, a flurry of replacements joins the team on the weekend before the All-Star Game. Some players will decline because of injuries, and some starting pitchers will need more rest.That doesn’t help with this exercise.The initial All-Star rosters will be announced on Saturday. In trying to decide who should make it, a couple of trends stand out: the American League is alarmingly thin on second basemen, and the National League is absolutely loaded with starting pitchers.Take left-hander Foster Griffin of the Washington Nationals. He surged in June, allowing just four earned runs in five starts, with 33 strikeouts and four walks in 31 1/3 innings. Overall, Griffin is 8-2 with a 2.93 ERA, a rousing success story after three seasons in Japan.“I didn’t want to put any expectations on myself,” he said this week before a game in Boston. “Goals and expectations are good to have, but I feel like they can either limit you or disappoint you very easily. So, mentally, I didn’t want to do that. I felt like I was in a good space, just knowing that I’ve changed some things. I feel I’ve matured as a baseball player and made some tweaks here and there that made me better, and I’d see where it took me.”It should take him to Citizens Bank Park for the All-Star Game, but with teammates CJ Abrams and James Wood likely to be among the 20 NL position players, the Nats might not get a pitcher on the 12-man staff. Pitchers such as Braxton Ashcraft, Paul Skenes, Logan Webb and Justin Wrobleski couldn’t make the team below, yet all could make strong cases.How did The Miz get this good, this fast?Derek VanRiper and Eno SarrisLuckily, for writers’ sake, we sit this one out. We vote for the major seasonal awards and the Hall of Fame, but not the All-Star Game. Fans elect the starters, and players cast their votes on the pitchers and reserves from June 24 to 28.Players must select at least five starters and three relievers among their 12 pitchers. MLB makes sure every team is represented somewhere on the roster. But only nine starting pitchers, at most, can make the squad — before the replacement brigade, anyway.Fortunately, Shohei Ohtani doesn’t count toward that total; he’s eligible to pitch but has already made the roster at designated hitter as the NL’s top vote-getter. Even so, through Thursday, there were 17 other NL pitchers (openers excluded) with at least 10 starts and an ERA of 3.33 or below. Apologies to the folks in that group who are not listed below.As for the AL second basemen, well, there’s a reason Ernie Clement of the Toronto Blue Jays already has a spot.Clement collected the most votes of any AL player, partly because he’s a doubles machine hitting around .300 — but also because the rest of the field is not exactly clustered with Lou Whitaker, Roberto Alomar, Dustin Pedroia or Robinson Canó. Clement is the only healthy AL second baseman with at least 25 games at the position and a .750 OPS.First base, meanwhile, has six AL players with an OPS over .850. One or two will almost certainly miss out, especially if fans elect Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a slugger disguised as a singles hitter in the first half.In any case, we’ll give it a try. For the starters, we picked from the finalists on the fan ballots. For the reserves, we also stuck to the rules: at least one representative from every team, at least three relievers and at least one backup at every position.American League