In one week, the brightest stars in baseball will gather in Minneapolis for the 2014 All-Star Game. It’s a three-day extravaganza, featuring high-priced hitters facing higher-priced pitchers. Getting named to an All-Star team is one of the highest honors a player can receive. Many players have lucrative All-Star appearance incentives built into their contracts.

For a dozen years now, the All-Star Game has been more than just ceremony. When the superstars take the diamond at Target Field they’ll be playing for home-field advantage in the World Series. It’s a meaningful reward for the winning league: Teams with home-field advantage are 8-3 since major league baseball first starting dangling this reward over the mid-summer classic in 2003.

The idea is to put something on the line, to give players and managers a little more incentive to win.

It’s time to move on from that idea. Red Sox Manager John Farrell, who will lead the American League team in the game next week, thinks there are far better ways to determine who gets home-field advantage.

“I think the overall record in interleague play might be more representative of who deserves home-field advantage,” Farrell said over the weekend. “There are so many different factors having gone through this in 2008 and watch (Terry Francona) deal with a number of teams to balance, knowing the outcome does have an effect, obviously, on the home field in October, but that’s a one-game showcase. I don’t want to say it’s necessarily not a competitive game because it is. I just think a full-body season of interleague play is more representative of who’s deserving of home-field advantage.”

Why not give the team with the best regular-season record home-field advantage? That can lead to executives waiting to see who survives the League Championship Series, but other sports have long done that with their playoffs.

The one thing Farrell can’t do is put together a roster that is built to win a game, one that includes middle relievers, defensive specialists and pinch hitters. Instead he has a group of individually great players that lacks role players. He was handcuffed by selection rules that left him just four roster spots.

“Going through this the first time, you’re handed an awful lot to make sure you include (on the roster) so it begins to narrow the selections quickly,” said Farrell. “You want to do what’s right for the individuals who’ve had great first halves of this season and then you look at what’s the best roster particularly when you look at the spare players or the extra players in event of a need late in a game. So that also factors into it as well. We have an obligation to do everything we can to win the game for home-field advantage in October.”

In 2005, Francona was unhappy that he had no way to put Mike Timlin, his best reliever, on the roster. When the All-Star break was over, he had to deal with a clubhouse full of players unhappy that one of their leaders couldn’t get named to the team even though the manager was supposedly in charge in filling out the roster.

Farrell doesn’t have an issue like that this year. Only one player – Jon Lester – was named to the team Sunday. Since each team needs to have at least one player representing it, you can safely say the lack of Red Sox players voted in is a reflection of Boston’s poor play.

For just the second time in 12 years, David Ortiz was not named to the team. Players such as Nelson Cruz and Victor Martinez have been better.

When Farrell returns from his trip to Minnesota he will have a much tougher job to do. The Sox have shown no signs of life and undoubtedly will start thinking about trading off key veterans and giving young players a chance to get more experience.

If the season plays out that way no one in Boston will be worrying about who gets home-field advantage in October.

Tom Caron is the studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN. His column appears in the Press Herald on Tuesdays.

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