Salvador Perez with huge lead at catcher in All-Star balloting in first update

MLB has released its first update on All-Star voting, and to no surprise, Salvador Perez has a massive lead among American League catchers. The six-time All-Star has 694,710 votes, a 552,909 vote-lead over the next-closest candidates, Chicago’s Yasmani Grandal. Salvy has the second-biggest lead by any position leader, behind only Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. at first base, and has garnered 43 percent of all votes cast at the AL catcher position.

The top three vote-getters at each position by June 24 will head to a run-off to conclude on July 1.

Salvy’s teammate, Whit Merrifield, needs a big vote push to get him in the running at second base. He is over 461,000 votes behind leader Marcus Semien of the Blue Jays, and would need to close a 52,000 vote-gap to surpass Yankees second baseman DJ LeMahieu to finish in the top three. Carlos Santana is even further back at first base, needing over 70,000 votes to get into the top three. Andrew Benintendi is 11th among all outfielders.

Interestingly, Adalberto Mondesi is much closer at making the runoff despite playing in just seven games. He sits in fifth among AL shortstops, and is only 54,000 votes behind third-place Tim Anderson. Mondesi has perhaps been helped by the MLB voting ballot, which lists his rate stats (.360 BA, 1.080 OPS) but not his games played. If he is selected, will he be able to make the trip across time zones to Denver to participate?

Despite our best efforts, Nicky Lopez is not listed among the top vote-getters at designated hitter. You can continue to vote two ways:

• On MLB platforms, including MLB.com, all 30 club sites and the MLB and MLB Ballpark mobile apps.
• On Google Search (in the U.S. and Canada only), fans can most efficiently vote for any player on the ballot by entering a player’s name (for example, “Nicky Lopez”), taking you directly to that player’s section of the ballot. Alternately, fans can go directly to the Google ballot or enter searches such as “MLB vote” or “MLB All-Star vote” in the search bar. These searches will trigger a full All-Star ballot within the search results.