MLB reportedly has plans for ‘Election Day’ to pick All-Star Game starters
Good thing this plan wasn’t implemented in 2015.
That was the year Royals fans proved to be adept at the online voting for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Four Royals started in that game (Salvador Perez, Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain and Alex Gordon). At one point, eight Royals players were leading at their positions, but MLB canceled 60 million votes amid concerns about voting irregularities.
“We scrubbed these first set of numbers incredibly thoroughly,” Bob Bowman, the CEO of MLB Advanced Media told Yahoo Sports at the time. “We said, ‘Can this possibly be right? Look at all these votes for Kansas City.’ It just didn’t turn out that way.”
Royals fans have shown a great, uh, zeal when it came to voting, and they will have even more opportunities this summer it appears.
Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that MLB has plans to change how All-Star Game starters are chosen.
Here is what Passan wrote: “Under the proposed plan, the standard online voting would take place starting this year. Upon its completion, the top three vote-getters at each position in each league would be on the ballot on Election Day, and whichever players received the most votes on that single day would determine the All-Star starters, according to (major league) sources.”
That ESPN story cites better fan engagement and more social media chatter as reasons for the change.
You can read more about that change and others MLB is considering here.
The All-Star Game is July 9 at Progressive Field in Cleveland.
This story was originally published March 6, 2019 at 1:54 PM.
