Daniel Murphy misses out on being an All-Star starter by only 88 votes
Mark Trumbo, Yadier Molina and Lorenzo Cain were also very close
By
Matt Snyder
•
1 min read
The rosters for the All-Star Game -- which is set for next Tuesday -- have been set and, as usual, the fans voted for the starters. Major League Baseball has released the voting tallies, and there were some fun little nuggets in here. Let's dive in.
First off, pretty much every race could be considered a blowout. Most were over 500,000 vote differences and some were over a million.
Here are three (well, technically four) races that weren't, and the first one is amazing.
The closest race was second base in the National League. Ben Zobrist of the Cubs will start and be backed up by Daniel Murphy of the Nationals. How close was that vote? Absurdly so.
Zobrist: 3,013,407
Murphy: 3,013,319
That's 88 votes! Amazing with more than three million votes per player that it ended up so close.
Some other races were close, but not that close. Let's look at the second and third spots for American League outfielders behind Mike Trout.
2. Jackie Bradley Jr.: 2,682,173
3. Mookie Betts: 2,499,540
4. Mark Trumbo: 2,334,544
5. Lorenzo Cain: 2,322,812
Obviously the gap is much wider than at second in the NL, with Trumbo being 164,996 votes away from third place, but that's still relatively close given how many votes are being cast.
Back to the NL, Cardinals backstop Yadier Molina led Buster Posey of the Giants for most of the voting period, but the former NL MVP pulled it out.
Posey: 2,266,868
Molina: 2,161,819
That's a tick over 105,000 votes. Again, that's awfully close. This being the second-closest vote illustrates just how ridiculous the 88-vote gap for Zobrist over Murphy is.
