The Kansas City Royals, Jose Altuve, and Mike Trout will face the National League in the All-Star Game if the American League results released today hold. The momentum is clearly favoring Kansas City, exemplified by first baseman Eric Hosmer moving from trailing Miguel Cabrera by 70,000 votes to moving ahead by 600,000. Hosmer earned about 1.5 million votes this week against Cabrera's 800,000.
Here is the latest AL voting update for the #ASG: pic.twitter.com/NcJVzRQqEZ
— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) June 8, 2015
Stephen Vogt is in second place, joining Cabrera, Altuve, Trout, Josh Donaldson, and Nelson Cruz as non-Royals earning over two million votes in this update. Marcus Semien remains a distant third, and Josh Reddick is polling 10th with around a million votes, gaining 360,000 from the last update.
The Kansas City momentum is getting delightfully absurd, especially when you consider that second baseman Omar Infante, sporting a .221/.230/.308 batting line, is poised to pass Jose Altuve next week after gaining 450,000 votes on him. Infante earned 1.2 million votes for the week, Altuve just 800,000. We're looking at Dallas Keuchel and the Kansas City Royals starting against the National League.
For the 1957 All-Star Game, readers of the Cincinnati Enquirer were given pre-marked printed ballots favoring the Cincinnati Redlegs in their Sunday paper, and that was enough to elect every position but first base, won by Stan Musial. That resulted in Commissioner Ford Frick stripping fans of their voting rights, which was not returned to the fans until 1970. Frick also appointed Willie Mays and Hank Aaron to start instead of the balloted Gus Bell and Wally Post.
The voting system this year has changed significantly from previous years. There are no more paper ballots, and the online ballot is limited to 35 votes per email address total. That's not per day. Once you have cast 35 votes from that email address, you need to choose another email address to continue to cast votes. You can use a fake email address generator to get more ballots if you are so inclined.
Voting continues through July 2, with updates on the standings each Monday.