(runs into the room out of breath)
The vote tally... the All-Star... vote tally... is here!
Well, it turns out the rest of the country really does get it when it comes to Brandon Crawford. I feared the emergence of Corey Seager a few years back meant the end of Crawford’s reign as the best shortstop in the National League and he’d fall into some odd abyss of obscurity, but his 2018 performance has been so far and away fantastic that the non-Seager shortstops aren’t getting nearly as much consideration by the fans at large; that’s how I read the vote totals, anyway.
Brandon Crawford: 1,120,031
Dansby Swanson: 568,400
Addison Russell: 475,091
Trevor Story: 315,532
Trea Turner: 279,071
The Braves’ SB Nation site, Talking Chop, is far and away the most visited/read site on the network, so I’m not surprised to see Swanson doing so well. Atlanta has its fans, or at least a large tech savvy group within the fan base that can make waves online, and that could explain his puffy total. Then again, Swanson’s also having a better season than the non-Crawford guys, so it’s perhaps better to assume that most fans just look at the stats when they pull up a ballot and vote off those numbers.
And that’s why I find the catcher race very troubling:
Buster Posey: 686,253
Wilson Contreras: 596,111
Kurt Suzuki (!): 557,692
Yadier Molina: 366,271
Yasmani Grandal: 333,549
Wilson Contreras is the only one in the bunch with an OPS over .800, and Suzuki’s is higher than Posey’s, too. But Buster Posey is Buster Posey, and, well, I don’t want the fans to pick someone else because Posey’s numbers aren’t as great. They’re still good! And he’s still Buster Posey! Still, if he could hit 4 home runs on this home stand that’d be swell.
Brandon Belt trails Freddie Freeman in 3rd place by 1,069,779 votes, so I’m conceding the first base race on Belt’s behalf. It’s doubtful that losing his appendix lost him this spot, but it sure didn’t help. Hopefully, young players don’t see what happened and think they need to have their appendix removed just in case.
Joe Panik is 4th amongst second basemen, but the separation between him and Scooter Gennett in 3rd place is approximately 550,000 votes, and he didn’t homer against the Dodgers this weekend, so, I’m conceding this race on his behalf as well.
Evan Longoria hangs in 5th place with 221,100 votes which were enough to bump Justin Turner from the top 5. His broken hand means a missed opportunity to deepen the rivalry.
Andrew McCutchen made it into the top 15 of outfielders 241,652 votes, which means Giants fans really have stepped up their voting over the past week. Or Pittsburgh fans got really nostalgic. In any case, McCutchen still trails the 3rd place outfielder, Matt Kemp (!), by nearly 700,000 votes, so, I’m conceding this race on his behalf.
If you want a takeaway from these results, it’s that you need to vote for Buster Posey a lot more and you need to get your friends, significant other(s), family, and acquaintances (including that person you met at one mixer a long time ago but whose friend request you still accepted the next morning) to also vote for him a lot more.