Ernie Clement almost beat Shohei Ohtani in the MLB All-Star fan vote this year and I need you to actually sit with that for a second, because it explains every single thing wrong with how this whole thing gets decided.
The MLB All-Star Fan Vote Just Handed Ernie Clement Ohtani’s Spotlight
Clement’s a good story, no argument there, guy got released, bounced around, ended up in Toronto as a bench piece who could play six positions, and he’s hitting like a real player having a real season now. He still pulled over three million votes though. More than Bobby Witt Jr, who’s out here playing like an MVP. Almost more than Ohtani, who is Ohtani. Not because he’s the best second baseman in the American League. Because the Blue Jays fanbase turned a fan vote into a team project, flashing the vote count on the scoreboard between innings at Rogers Centre like it was a telethon, and got six of their own guys into the final round of voting on a team that isn’t even running away with anything this year.
Nobody actually believes Ernie Clement is the best second baseman alive right now. Not even Ernie Clement believes that. That’s the whole scam laid bare in one guy’s name.
I get organizing behind your guy, that’s baseball, that’s fun, I’d do the same for a Pirate if we ever had one worth doing it for. The problem isn’t that Toronto showed up. The problem is the system lets showing up completely replace being good, and there’s no version of this where that’s not going to keep happening every single year to whichever fanbase is the most online that month.
Brice Turang Did Everything Right and Still Isn’t in Philly
Meanwhile Brice Turang doesn’t make the team at all, and if there’s a real snub in this whole mess, it’s him. Doesn’t start, doesn’t back up, nothing. Not because he had a bad year, the guy’s been playing great defense and hitting well for three years running, he just lost the popularity contest to Ozzie Albies having a nice bounce back season, and then lost the backup spot too when the players went with Luis Arraez instead. The guy who’s actually been doing it consistently is home, and the guy who won a vote is in Philadelphia. That’s not a system picking the best players. That’s a system picking whoever’s face people remember from October.
Vladdy Won the Vote and He’s Not Even Walking Through the Door
This is the one that got me, Vladdy Jr won the actual fan vote to START at first base for the American League, and announced he’s skipping the game entirely because his back’s bothering him. Nick Kurtz, who’s leading all of Major League Baseball in RBI right now, steps in and starts instead, replacing a guy who never should’ve been ahead of him to begin with. The fans elected the wrong guy AND HE’S NOT EVEN SHOWING UP. You cannot write a cleaner example of why this vote means nothing if you tried.
This Game Hasn’t Mattered Since 2017 Anyway
This part actually stings though, this game used to matter, even if it was fake mattering. It decided home field advantage in the World Series for over a decade, guys were diving for balls in July because there was actually something on the line come October. That’s been gone since 2017. It’s just an exhibition now with a bonus check attached, and I don’t know how many more years of that before nobody outside the guys actually going even remembers it happened.
They Found a Way to Ruin the Home Run Derby Too
They found a way to make the one event that was still pure fun worse too. The Home Run Derby’s been a clock the whole time I’ve been alive basically, three minutes, swing as much as you want, chaos, guys gassed out trying to squeeze in one more bomb before the buzzer. That’s gone for 2026. It’s swing counts now, twenty in the first round, fifteen the next two, and once you’re out of swings you’re out, unless you go deep on your very last one, then you get to keep going till you finally miss. Sounds like a fun wrinkle on paper but the actual effect, per basically everyone who’s looked at it, is way fewer homers and guys taking pitches just to save their legs for the second half. They moved it off the network that’s carried it for almost thirty years onto Netflix too, who apparently pushed for this format themselves. The derby records that got set the old way are basically untouchable now, because there just aren’t enough swings left in a night to get there anymore.
Who’s the guy in the room saying yes to fewer home runs in the Home Run Derby…
I don’t need this to go back to being a game that decides anything, an exhibition can just be an exhibition. What I need is for the two showcase events of the entire season to stop actively getting worse every single year in the name of fixing something that wasn’t broken.
One Vote a Side, That’s It, Let the Rest Sort Itself Out
The actual fix isn’t complicated. One fan vote per league, that’s it, one guy each side, keep the part where a fanbase gets to have their moment and put their guy on the mic. Everything else, every other roster spot, gets picked by the people who actually watch two hundred games a year, the players and the front offices, the way pitchers already get picked. You lose Ernie Clement almost outvoting Ohtani. You gain Brice Turang actually getting his flowers. Give the Derby its lawlessness back too, the clock, the chaos, let a guy hit forty in a round again if he’s got it in him.
