Royals end up with 4 All-Star starters, Cabrera wins spot

Two weeks ago, Cincinnati Reds third baseman and Toms River native Todd Frazier was down 2.5 million votes in the All-Star Game ballot.

The four members of the Kansas City Royals who will be starting in the All-Star Game for the American League team are Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Alex Gordon, and Salvador Perez. Some commentators have started to post their “true All Stars”, see Grant Bisbee’s recent post on SB Nation for example, and one thing that many AL fans will note with a rueful smile is the comparative lack of Kansas City Royals players when compared to the actual team appearing in Cincinnati in mid-July.

The Kansas City quartet make up half of the eight American League position players who were announced on Sunday after on-line ballotting for the American League and National League starters in the annual mid-season showcase.

The other day Ned Yost was doing a radio interview and I heard him say he’d been spending 2-to-3 hours a day on the All-Star game. “I think we play with a lot of energy, a lot of fun”.

Donaldson, who collected 14,090,188 total votes, set a new all-time single-season voting record, surpassing Josh Hamilton’s 2012 total of 11,073,744 tallies.

In his first year with Toronto since his move from Oakland, the 29-year-old ranks second in the majors with 61 runs scored while hitting.

Seattle’s Nelson Cruz, suspended for the final 50 games of the 2013 season for violating baseball’s drug agreement, was also elected to start on the AL squad for the second straight year. As of last week, more than 500 million votes had been cast. At one point, they had eight of those spots filled by Royals, but it fell down to four starters by the end of the voting process.

Pitchers, reserves and final-vote candidates for the All-Star Game will be announced Monday. “Right now I got the opportunity and right now I feel so happy….” Votto finished in second place in the fan vote, while Phillips finished third. All-Star games are, by their very nature, a popularity contest. Holliday will attempt to return later in the week to try and get ready for the game. Reigning NL MVP and Cy Young Award victor Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers did not make the All-Star team.

I recently wrote a piece about Jarrod Dyson playing through an injury, and a reader commented that if Dyson were not 100 percent, he shouldn’t be on the field.

Fans can vote through Friday for the final player on each roster.

But thanks to an influx of votes and some behind-the-scenes work by Major League Baseball, the AL’s starting lineup will be as close to the best collection of talent as possible, and not simply an exhibition starring the Royals. The Blue Jays are the first team to have different players finish as the top vote-getter in consecutive seasons since fan-voting returned in 1970.