Nicky Lopez is the Royals DH on the All-Star ballot, so let’s vote him in

All-Star voting begins online today, with the game scheduled to be played July 13 at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado. You can vote now for all your favorite Royals, and we know how much Royals fans like to vote.

On the ballot is six-time All-Star catcher Salvador Perez, who is raking this season. There is also 2019 All-Stars Carlos Santana at first base and Whit Merrifield at second base. Adalberto Mondesi is on the ballot at shortstop, Hunter Dozier is listed at third, and the outfield lists Andrew Benintendi, Michael Taylor, and Jorge Soler as your Royals voting options.

You can also vote for designated hitter, but the option there is a bit curious - it is Nicky Lopez. Lopez is hitting .224/.332/.306 this season and has literally never started a game at designated hitter in his big league career. Rather, he was a Gold Glove finalist at second base last year, and has started 47 games at shortstop this year to fill in for the injured Mondesi.

It would make more sense to have Lopez at second, Merrifield in right, and Soler at DH. But there is some strategy going on here. Merrifield as an outfielder would probably get lost in the mix, but as a candidate at second base, he would have a fair shot at getting voted in as a starter. Why did the Royals choose Lopez at DH over say, Ryan O’Hearn? Good question, although O’Hearn’s shuttling between the big leagues and Triple-A is likely a reason why. In either case, it seems unlikely that the Royals will get a player voted in at DH to represent the American League.

OR IS IT? We need you, Royals fans, to vote for Nicky Lopez at DH. Royals fans nearly broke the 2016 All-Star Game voting and we can do it again. There are two ways to vote:

• 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.

Voting runs from 3 p.m. CT on June 24, with a runoff of the top three vote-getters at each position from June 28 to July 1.

Why are we doing this?

So get out there and Vote for Nicky (and all the other Royals, especially Salvy and Whit)!