Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today's edition is brought to you by Brian Murphy.
Hot off the presses, our first look at the All-Star Game voting is here!
Now, don’t worry if you haven’t voted yet; you’ve still got 10 days left before the end of Phase 1, so go ahead and start casting your ballots. (You can vote up to five times every 24-hour period!) In the first phase, which ends at noon ET on June 25, the top two vote-getters at each position (in the outfield, it's six) will move on to Phase 2, where the winner in the head-to-head battle will be named the All-Star starter.
Millions of ballots have already been submitted, with more and more coming in by the hour. But as of this moment, here are the three most interesting takeaways from our first glance at the voting.
Superstar DHs have surpassed 1 million votes
The leading vote-getter in each league by the end of Phase 1 automatically earns a spot in the starting lineup for the Midsummer Classic.
Right now, those players would be the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and the Astros’ Yordan Alvarez, who are the only two players with vote totals in the seven-figure range.
You can pretty much pencil Ohtani’s name into the NL lineup right now. With 1,165,133 votes, he has a nearly 200,000-vote edge over the league’s second-highest vote-getter. That is Braves catcher Drake Baldwin, who has been out for nearly a month due to a right oblique strain (but may be activated tomorrow). Surprisingly, Ohtani has never been MLB’s top vote-getter for the All-Star Game, but that could be about to change.
Alvarez is at 1,015,768 votes, giving him about a 38,000-vote advantage over the Yankees’ Aaron Judge in the American League. However, no one has a better OPS (1.084) or more home runs (24) than the Astros slugger, while Judge is expected to miss the Midsummer Classic due to his fractured rib.
Fans showing up for Blue Jays
It’s been an underwhelming season thus far for the Blue Jays in the wake of their run to the AL pennant in 2025. Although they started playing better ball late last month, they sit at 34-38, 10 games back in the AL East, and have seen numerous big-name players either not live up to expectations or get taken down by injuries.
But don’t tell that to their fans! There is a Blue Jay within the top two of the AL voting at every infield position as well as DH (although George Springer is nowhere close to Yordan). Vladimir Guerrero Jr., despite having just three homers this season, leads the Yankees’ Ben Rice by more than 93,000 votes at first base.
Meanwhile, Ernie Clement is absolutely lapping the field at second base. He is more than 616,000 votes clear of the No. 2 vote-getter at second, the Rangers’ Ezequiel Duran. Clement, who became a cult hero for the Blue Jays during the 2025 postseason, is batting .304 and paces the AL with 20 doubles.
Shortstop Andrés Giménez, third baseman Kazuma Okamoto and catcher Alejandro Kirk are all in position to advance to Phase 2 of the voting as well.
Lots of support for the reigning two-time champs
This year’s All-Star Game in Philadelphia may be bathed in blue.
Besides the strong showing from the Blue Jays, the Dodgers have four players at the very top of their respective positions in the NL voting: Ohtani, first baseman Freddie Freeman, third baseman Max Muncy and outfielder Andy Pages.
Will Smith is more than 310,00 votes behind Baldwin at catcher but still looking good to advance to Phase 2. And there is an extremely tight race shaping up at shortstop, where the Nationals’ CJ Abrams, who would be the first shortstop in Expos/Nationals franchise history to start the All-Star Game, is only about 12,000 votes in front of eight-time All-Star Mookie Betts.
