The American League All-Star team is mostly Kansas City Royals
There’s a little less than a month to go until the 2015 MLB All-Star Game. Fan balloting for the starting lineups ends the night of July 2, just over two weeks away.
And as of right now, the Kansas City Royals have eight starters.
Every single position on the American League ballot features a Royal as the leading vote-getter, even second baseman Omar Infante and his .202 batting average and .496 OPS. The only non-Royal in the lineup at this very moment is Angels’ outfielder/defending AL MVP Mike Trout, who currently trails KC center fielder Lorenzo Cain by over 650,000 votes.
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Hmm, seems a little fishy, doesn’t it? Surely there’s something not quite kosher here. Not so, according to Fox Sports and MLB Network’s Ken Rosenthal.
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The situation harkens back to 1957, when the Cincinnati Reds got seven players elected to the game due to the Cincinnati Enquirer publishing and distributing pre-filled out ballots. Then MLB commissioner Ford C. Frick ordered an investigation, and when he discovered that over half of the ballots for the game came from Cincinnati, Frick not only replaced two of the elected Reds with Wille Mays and Henry Aaron, he eliminated fan voting altogether, with managers and players choosing the teams until 1969.
For what it’s worth, Royals manager Ned Yost told USA Today that “there’s nothing wrong. Vote! The votes are the votes. If you don’t like it, go out there and vote. Our fans have gotten out and voted.’’
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