Yankees Trail in 2016 MLB All Star Voting

Despite a recent wave of support, Yankees Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann face a daunting climb in the 2016 All Star Balloting.

Major League Baseball released their third update on the 2016 MLB All Star voting Tuesday afternoon. Only two New York Yankees were in the top five for any position, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. Yankees fans can find the ballot here to cast their votes.

McCann ranked third among catchers with 446,697 votes. He still has a shot at catching second place Matt Wieters, who currently has 672,822 votes, but first place Salvador Perez is far out of reach with over two million votes. Beltran has ridden a hot month of June to ninth place on the outfield list, but that position is so stocked with premium talent (and Royals for some reason) that he’ll have a hard time climbing any higher.

Both McCann and Beltran are longshots to make the team in any capacity. Anyone who has seen the team’s offense this year shouldn’t be surprised by the Yanks’ poor showing in the position player rankings. Through 63 games, they rank 13th in the American League in runs scored per game. The poor performance has been a real team effort, with Yankees ranking below average at seven of nine positions according to Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Average metric.

On the pitching side, the Yankees’ best bets may be Andrew Miller, Masahiro Tanaka, and CC Sabathia. Miller has a sparkling 1.01 ERA through 26.2 IP while striking out an insane 48% of batters faced. He has only walked one batter all year coming into Tuesday. Tanaka ranks sixth in the American League with 1.9 fWAR, while his ERA is 10th among qualified pitchers, and his 52.6 GB% is seventh. Sabathia’s 2.28 ERA puts him fourth in the AL for pitchers with 50 innings minimum, and he ranks tenth by fWAR.

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You can make a pretty convincing case that Tanaka and Sabathia have both been among the top ten best starters in the American League this season, which should make them finalists for the All Star pitching staff. Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman are also worthy of consideration, but neither quite makes it in my opinion. Chapman’s suspension obviously hurts him, and Betances has allowed a few too many big hits this year, even if he is still the most dominating closer in the league day to day.