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In a few days, Major League Baseball will break for the All-Star Game. It’ll be a nice, lighthearted exhibition for everyone involved.

But after that, things are going to get nutty.

With the July 31 trade deadline looming, baseball’s trade season will get into full-swing after the Midsummer Classic comes and goes on July 12. We’re here to preview the madness, with a look at who’s selling, who’s buying and, with assists from MLB Trade Rumors, which players figure to be available. Also, we have a few (likely ill-fated) predictions for blockbuster trades.

We’ll start with the buyers and sellers. Step into the box when you’re ready.

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After months of voting, only two spots remain unfilled for the 87th annual MLB All-Star Game, which will be played Tuesday, July 12, at 7:30 p.m. ET in San Diego’s Petco Park. Fans have until Friday, July 8, at 4 p.m. ET to vote for the players they believe deserve to join the festivities.

For the first time since 2009, a pitcher doesn’t appear on the ballot, which is comprised of both seasoned veterans with previous All-Star experience and up-and-coming youngsters looking for their first taste of the Midsummer Classic.

Per MLB.com, this year’s nominees are:

American League

• 2B Ian Kinsler, Detroit Tigers
• 3B Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay Rays
• 2B Dustin Pedroia, Boston Red Sox
• OF Michael Saunders, Toronto Blue Jays
• OF George Springer, Houston Astros

National League

• 1B Brandon Belt, San Francisco Giants
• OF Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers
• 3B Jake Lamb, Arizona Diamondbacks
• OF Starling Marte, Pittsburgh Pirates
• SS Trevor Story, Colorado Rockies

While a player’s performance over the first half of the regular season was taken into account when coming up with the odds that follow, the vote is a popularity contest. That doesn’t bode well for players like Lamb and Longoria.

We’ll start with the players facing the longest odds of winning this year’s final vote, alternating between leagues, until we get to the overwhelming favorites to represent their teams and earn the right to be called All-Stars.

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Can Mike Trout make it three All-Star Game MVP awards in a row?

That’s the question for the Los Angeles Angels phenom as he was once again voted into the starting lineup for the American League Tuesday night. The All-Star Game will be played July 12 in San Diego, California.

The American League has won three games in a row, and catcher Salvador Perez of the Kansas City Royals secured the highest vote total of any player in either league. The Royals catcher is becoming a dominant player.

Perez’s teammate, Eric Hosmer, will join him in the American League starting lineup, starting at first base. Jose Altuve, a legitimate American League MVP candidate, will start at second base. The Houston Astros star is hitting a league-best .353 and he has also bashed 14 home runs and 49 RBI.

Shortstop Xander Bogaerts of the Boston Red Sox has plenty of company in the starting lineup. In addition to slugging designated hitter David Ortiz, outfielders Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. will also start for the American League. Bradley had a 29-game hitting streak earlier this year, and he is one of the best defensive outfielders in either league.

Manny Machado of the Baltimore Orioles, another legitimate MVP candidate with a .325 batting average along with 18 home runs and 50 RBI, will start at third base even though he has played most of the season at shortstop.

On the National League side, the Senior Circuit has a distinctly Chicago Cub flavor. Anthony Rizzo will start at first base, Ben Zobrist was voted in as a starter at second base along with Addison Russell at shortstop and MVP candidate Kris Bryant is at third base.

Zobrist edged out Daniel Murphy of the Washington Nationals by 88 votes, according to ESPN Stats & Info, and while that’s a difficult reality for the Washington second baseman, he did make the team as a reserve.

Buster Posey edged out Yadier Molina and will start behind the plate for the National League. However, a good case can be made that Wilson Ramos of the Washington Nationals deserved to start as a result of his superb first half.

Ramos made the All-Star team as a reserve, and teammate Bryce Harper will start in the outfield along with Yoenis Cespedes of the New York Mets and Dexter Fowler of the Cubs.

Other National League key reserves Paul Goldschmidt of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Matt Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals, Nolan Arenado of the Colorado Rockies and Corey Seager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Seager has been impressive throughout the year. He is hitting .305 with 17 homers and 41 RBI, and his performance has been more consistent than Russell’s. The Chicago shortstop hit two home runs Tuesday and now has 11 for the season

American League reserves include Mark Trumbo of the Baltimore Orioles, who has 24 home runs, along with Robinson Cano, who is hitting .303 with 19 home runs for the Seattle Mariners. Ian Desmond, an MVP candidate for the Texas Rangers, made the American League team at shortstop. He is hitting .321 with 15 home runs and 52 RBI.

Clayton Kershaw was named to the National League pitching staff and almost certainly would have been the starter if he had not been put on the disabled list recently with a back issue. That honor could fall to Stephen Strasburg of the Washington Nationals, Jake Arrieta of the Chicago Cubs or Noah Syndergaard of the New York Mets.

Chris Sale of the Chicago White Sox could start for the American League, although that honor could go to Cole Hamels of the Texas Rangers or perhaps Danny Salazar of the Cleveland Indians. The American League has nine relief pitchers and just five starters.

There are significant snubs on both sides. Brandon Crawford (.270, 8 HR, 53 RBI) has been a mainstay for the San Francisco Giants at shortstop and he won’t be in San Diego, and neither will Freddie Freeman (.292, 14 HR, 31 RBI) of the Atlanta Braves or Gregory Polanco (.297, 12 HR, 50 RBI) of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Ian Kinsler did not get named to the American League team, even though he is on pace to score 123 runs and drive in 100. Power hitter Chris Davis of the Orioles was left off the American League team despite bashing 21 home runs and driving in 56 runs. Red Sox star second baseman Dustin Pedroia was not named to the American League team, either.

 All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The All-Star Game is one week away, and Major League Baseball will announce the starting rosters for the American League and National League on Tuesday night.

While there is a chance for some changes in voting based on last week’s results, the tightest races are in the American League’s outfield and the National League’s catching showdown. 

Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels, the MVP of the last two All-Star Games, should be secure in the American League outfield, while Jackie Bradley Jr. and Mookie Betts of the Boston Red Sox are trying to hold off Lorenzo Cain of the Kansas City Royals and Mark Trumbo of the Baltimore Orioles. 

Bradley had a 29-game hitting streak earlier this year, which brought him some attention. In addition to being one of the top defensive outfielders in the game, he brought his improvement as a hitter into focus. While his average has dropped in the last month, Bradley is still hitting .294 with 13 home runs and 53 RBI.

Betts started the season slowly, but he has raised his average to .296, hit 18 home runs and knocked in 57 runs. Betts has stolen 13 bases on 14 attempts, while Bradley has swiped seven on eight attempts.

Cain is having a solid year for the Royals, but his numbers are a tad below those of the Boston duo. Cain, who suffered a hamstring injury in late June, is hitting .290 with eight home runs and 39 RBI.

Even if Trumbo doesn’t make the starting lineup, it will be difficult to keep him off the American League roster. He has pounded out 24 home runs and knocked in 62 runs while putting together a respectable .280 batting average.

On the National League side, Yadier Molina of the St. Louis Cardinals had a lead of slightly more than 5,000 votes over Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants, so the vote could end up in either star’s favor when MLB makes the final announcement.

While Molina and Posey have been two of the best catchers in the big leagues over the years, Wilson Ramos of the Washington Nationals appears to be the most deserving candidate this season.

Ramos is having a sensational season, hitting .340 with 13 home runs and 46 RBI. Posey is having a fine year with a .291 batting average along with 10 homers and 40 RBI. Molina’s production has been limited, as he has hit just one home run and driven in 27 runs to go with his .259 batting average.

The four Chicago Cubs infielders are leading the way at their respective positions. Anthony Rizzo is in command at first base, while Ben Zobrist and Kris Bryant are on top at second and third base, respectively. Those three are having fine years for a Cubs team that got off to a sensational start this season, but shortstop Addison Russell has been disappointing.

Russell is hitting .238 with nine home runs and 45 RBI, and Trevor Story of the Colorado Rockies and Corey Seager of the Los Angeles Dodgers are having better years. Story is batting .264 with 19 home runs and 50 RBI, while Seager is hitting .305 with 17 home runs and 41 RBI.

On the American League side, catcher Salvador Perez is the leading vote-getter among all major leaguers with more than 3.7 million votes.

David Ortiz is the second-leading vote-getter with more than 3.4 million supporters, and he is running away with the top spot at designated hitter.

Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros is dominating at second base, while Manny Machado of the Baltimore Orioles has a sizable lead over Josh Donaldson of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Machado‘s lead is controversial, however, because the ballot lists him at third base even though he has been playing shortstop for the Orioles.

All statistics courtesy of CBS Sports as of July 4.

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Fans can decipher most of the 2016 MLB All-Star Game starting selections before Tuesday night’s lineup reveal.

Based on the final update that MLB Communications provided last Monday, most of the voting leads are too sizable to erase. Tight battles are brewing in the American League’s outfield and behind the National League’s plate, but voters have flocked to the deserving candidates in recent weeks. 

Overall, the starting lineups will look the way All-Star lineups should. There should be no easy outs on account of bad decisions from the voting populous.

It’s nice when the All-Star teams are actually full of stars. 

With the starters seemingly settled, let’s go a step further and project each squad’s All-Star Game batting order.

American League

Not even Ned Yost—the manager who won a World Series despite batting Alcides Escobar in the leadoff spot—can mess up this lineup.

The fans are making the Kansas City Royals skipper’s job easy by selecting a group of deserving, well-rounded hitters. Catcher Salvador Perez has the lowest batting average (.281) in a lineup with five guys batting .325 or better.

Yost will love receiving a lineup full of elite contact hitters with power and speed. Then there’s designated hitter David Ortiz, who is an easy choice to bat cleanup in his final All-Star Game. He deserves it, given his 1.108 OPS, more than 100 points ahead of anyone else.

When everyone is this good, the order doesn’t matter much anyway.

Yost can appreciate the benefit of gaining home-field advantage in the World Series after enjoying it in each of the past two years. Per the Kansas City Star‘s Pete Grathoff, he understands the importance of winning this exhibition contest:

If you’ve ever been to a playoff game in Kansas City, you know that’s a home-field advantage. It’s big. It’s big for everybody, especially when you get down to the end of the season and you’re playing a big series, you want that home-field advantage. You want your fans behind you. You want to sleep in your own bed. It’s important.

Last year, Yost slotted Jose Altuve second in the No. 8 role. The Houston Astros second baseman entered the game hitting .293/.335/.412, justifying his bid afterward with a .337/.372/.512 second-half slash line. 

The 26-year-old has ascended to MVP territory, hitting .355/.428/.575 with more walks (39) than strikeouts (33). Midway into 2016, he’s one home run away from matching last season’s career high of 15.

Last week, MLB statistician Ryan Spaeder monitored Altuve‘s incredible performance days before he earned his fourth four-hit game of the year:

He’ll bat either No. 1 or 2, depending on whether Yost wants Trout No. 2 or 3. After Yost has spent so much time slotting a shortstop with a career .262 average in the leadoff role, Xander Bogaerts‘ .334 average may prove too tantalizing to resist.

A healthy Clayton Kershaw may have coerced the manager into protecting lefty Eric Hosmer, but he’ll want to reward his first baseman for a strong first half at the plate. (His poor defensive metrics are an issue for another day.) Yost will also save Perez from the No. 9 spot to inject one of the Boston Red Sox’s athletic outfielders at the bottom.

National League

Despite his postseason power tear, the New York Mets made little effort to bring back Daniel Murphy. This almost certainly wasn’t manager Terry Collins’ call.

Management chose not to pay an erratic fielder with limited plate discipline, but the Mets skipper always featured him prominently in the batting order. Per ESPN.com’s Adam Rubin last month, Collins has continued to speak fondly of Murphy, who is now wreaking havoc on the Mets with the Washington Nationals:

I’m not shocked. I’ve always thought Dan Murphy can win a batting title. If he took bases on balls, as we said many years ago, I think this guy was 10 walks short [instead of outs] of winning a battle title three years ago. It’s in him to do that. I’m excited that he’s doing well. We think the world of Dan and what he did here.

Murphy is one of several infielders who are lagging behind a Chicago Cub in the voting tally. Ben Zobrist will block second base, but Collins can reward the man who tormented the Cubs last October and sent New York to the World Series with four homers in as many games.

Choosing Murphy as the designated hitter wouldn’t just be a biased token of gratitude from an old boss. Murphy sports an NL-best .346 batting average while maintaining last year’s power spark, already replicating last year’s career-high 14 home runs. Altuve and Ortiz are the only other hitters with more extra-base hits than strikeouts.

With Curtis Granderson serving as his leadoff man, Collins seems to understand the importance of setting the table with a patient hitter. While Zobrist isn’t the flashiest All-Star, he leads all NL starters with a .406 on-base percentage. (That would change if Matt Carpenter or Paul Goldschmidt filled the DH spot.)

He’ll likely want to reward Mets outfielder Yoenis Cespedes for his 20 dingers and .571 slugging percentage, so he joins Cubs corner infielders Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo for a powerful punch. Collins might, however, rearrange the order to alternate his lefties and righties.

Yadier Molina led the latest official update, but Buster Posey soared ahead before the voting closed late Thursday night, according to MLB.com’s Chris Haft. The San Francisco Giants catcher is a household name who is having a far superior season to Molina, so expect him to stay ahead in the tightest race.

After spending his rookie campaign batting No. 9 behind the pitcher, Addison Russell won’t get his feelings hurt by batting at the bottom again. As the one guy in either lineup without All-Star credentials, he’s lucky just to be here.

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At this time of year, numerous articles attempt to predict who will make the trip to the MLB All-Star Game.

With the rosters set to be revealed Tuesday night ahead of the July 12 All-Star Game in San Diego, we’ve decided to take a slightly different approach here.

Rather than focus on forecasting the actual roster, we’ve predicted who fans will talk about once the rosters are announced.

We’ve chosen our biggest position-player snub, pitcher snub and roster surprise for each league while also taking a crack at predicting the five players who will make up the Final Vote ballot in each league.

Now in order to make these predictions, we needed to set a baseline by determining who will be selected. You can find that on the next slide, but the focus here was on the aforementioned categories.

Rounding things out, we made our predictions for how each team’s starting lineup will look, including the starting pitchers.

It’s a slightly different take on the usual roster-prediction article. Enjoy.

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Whether or not they win their respective leagues, the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs are set to make a mark on this year’s World Series.

Home-field advantage plays a pivotal role in any playoff series, so MLB naturally lets an exhibition game decide who gets an extra home game during the championship showdown. If the Red Sox or Cubs don’t make the Fall Classic, the participants can thank or blame the All-Star Game outcome.

In the latest voting updates, provided on Monday by MLB Communications, five Cubs and four Red Sox hitters are slated to start the All-Star Game on July 12. Beside Boston outfielder Mookie Betts, all of them have comfortable leads.

The voting window closed on Thursday, and MLB will reveal each side’s starters on Tuesday night. Little is likely to change, but Buster Posey recently gained a narrow lead over Yadier Molina at catcher.

Let’s look at the updated leaderboard before diving into baseball’s premier offenses, who will be heavily represented in the starting lineups.

Boston Red Sox

Boston leads MLB in runs scored and weighted on-base average (wOBA), so this isn’t a case of biased fans flooding the ballots for an unjust cause. All four guys deserve their spots.

Luckily for Xander Bogaerts, Manny Machado is listed as a third baseman despite switching to shortstop during the season. As a result, both young stars will cohabit the left side of the American League’s infield barring a major voting turnaround.

Although his .337 batting average ranks third in the AL to Jose Altuve and David Ortiz, Bogaerts has taken the anticipated leap to stardom with a power uptick. After hitting seven home runs last year, he has gone deep nine times while also collecting 21 doubles.

The 23-year-old is a legitimate MVP candidate, but he’s not Boston’s best hitter. That honor belongs to Ortiz, whose .684 slugging percentage and .457 wOBA lead all qualified hitters by cavernous margins. 

Fans tend to vote retiring veterans in as a sort of lifetime achievement award, but the 40-year-old has earned his spot. He won’t, however, participate in one final Home Run Derby. According to the Boston Herald‘s Jason Mastrodonato, manager John Farrell is worried about the veteran designated hitter losing a step as a result of running out a league-high 31 doubles.

“There have been some times where it’s maybe not been what we saw early in the season,” Farrell said. “The one thing is, we’ve charted the total bases to date and particularly it’s the doubles, the two-base running that really taxes him.”

The most unlikely name of the bunch, Jackie Bradley Jr., was a career .193 hitter before last year’s All-Star break. He has since recorded 20 homers and 10 steals over 149 games, cementing his late breakout with a .297/.385/.558 slash line this season.

Mastrodonato showed how well the 26-year-old outfielder has performed since last year’s late breakthrough:

Betts, having recently gained possession of the third spot, shouldn’t lose it on Tuesday night. The 23-year-old has gained everyone’s attention by hitting .291/.331/.506 with 16 homers and 13 steals. Meanwhile, two of his top competitors—Jose Bautista and Lorenzo Cain—are on the disabled list

Last year, Brock Holt was the Red Sox’s lone All-Star representative—and a controversial one given his .791 first-half OPS. Now they’re on the verge of sending four players to San Diego, possibly five if knuckleballer Steven Wright gets the starting nod.

Chicago Cubs

The Cubs have outscored their opposition by 161 runs, and no other team has a triple-digit run differential. They’re the favorites to reach the World Series, so their players might as well fight for home-field advantage.

Chicago is poised to send its entire infield and center fielder Dexter Fowler to the Midsummer Classic. Per the Chicago Tribune‘s Mark Gonzalez, manager Joe Maddon is excited about watching his players share the spotlight.

“All day I’ll be looking forward to that moment of sitting there and watching them being introduced and standing on the line, tipping their cap and that will be awesome for us, as a team, for the organization, and for all Cubs fans,” Maddon said. “It’s pretty powerful.”

Even though Daniel Murphy and Nolan Arenado have valid starting credentials, they will likely make the team as reserves. Beside, Ben Zobrist and Kris Bryant also boast All-Star portfolios.

He can’t match Murphy’s .352 average, but Ben Zobrist warrants a roster spot on the strength of a stellar .406 on-base percentage. The patient 35-year-old has drawn more walks (49) than strikeouts (46) during his first year with the Cubs.

After a recent hot streak, including a three-homer game, Kris Bryant boasts an NL-best 4.0 WAR. He also drilled two doubles on Monday to do something that hasn’t happened for almost as long as the team’s infamous title drought:

Any case for Wil Myers or Paul Goldschmidt isn’t a knock on Anthony Rizzo, who is hitting .279/.402/.566 with 19 dingers. The first baseman validated this choice by batting .378/.467/.744 during a red-hot June.

Addison Russell is the lone pure culprit of homerism. There are far better choices than the shortstop with a .719, particularly Corey Seager:

Nevertheless, Russell’s lead over Trevor Story would’ve been too wide to eliminate in a week, especially with the Cubs faithful backing the 22-year-old. His inclusion would cost Seager, Story and Brandon Crawford trips to San Diego.

All advanced stats courtesy of FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The votes are in, and now we wait for the official word on who’s invited to the 2016 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Perhaps there will be some surprises.

Unless, of course, all our predictions come true.

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last set of predictions for the 34-man rosters for the American League and National League All-Stars. Things have changed since then. The fan vote closed Thursday night, and the arrival of July means the grand reveal of the rosters (July 5) and the Midsummer Classic itself (July 12) are just about here.

Like last time, the idea is not to propose which players should be All-Stars. It’s to guess who the fans—whose voting patterns have gotten frequent updates—the players and AL manager Ned Yost and NL manager Terry Collins will choose to be in uniform at Petco Park on July 12. There’s also the final vote, which is a total shot in the dark at this juncture.

Whatever the case, the following is certainly a who’s who of excellent ballplayers. Read on and enjoy!

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Attention big league shoppers: You have four weeks left to find the piece—or pieces—you need for the stretch run. That might seem like a long time, but it’s not. The Aug. 1 non-waiver trade deadline will be here before you know it.

As a result, the rumor mill has been buzzing. It’s not spinning as fast as an Aroldis Chapman fastball, but it’s certainly moving faster than what passes for a heater from Jered Weaver these days.

Is a forgotten-about veteran starter on more than one contender’s radar? Could a pair of currently employed veteran sluggers become free agents before the season ends? Have general managers learned from the past mistakes one of their counterparts has made?

We’ll hit on all that and more in this week’s pitching-heavy round of fact or fiction.

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As voting for the All-Star Game reached the home stretch, it’s clear that fans have given the Chicago Cubs quite a bit of respect.

The Cubs are hoping that the 2016 season will see them gain their first spot in the World Series since 1945 and their first championship since 1908, and the team’s tremendous first half of the season is reflected in the All-Star voting.

All four of the infield spots in the National League belong to the Cubs. Anthony Rizzo, Ben Zobrist, Addison Russell and Kris Bryant are all leading at their respective positions, according to MLB Communications.

Zobrist, Russell and Bryant are all leading at their positions by more than 300,000 votes each and appear to be in good position to hold on to their respective leads, while Rizzo has a lead of nearly 1.4 million votes over Brandon Belt of the San Francisco Giants at first base.

A good case can be made that three of the Cubs infielders deserve their good fortunes with the voters, while Russell’s position appears to be the result of excess Cubby love.

He is hitting .235 with seven home runs and 40 RBI this season and a 1.5 WAR (wins above replacement), according to Baseball-Reference.com, while rookie Trevor Story of the Colorado Rockies has a .267 average along with 19 home runs and 50 RBI and a 2.0 WAR.

Story has 104 strikeouts on his ledger, and that may be distasteful to many of the voters. Corey Seager of the Dodgers is performing at an All-Star level with a .297 average, 16 home runs and 38 RBI and a 3.0 WAR.

The other viable National League shortstop candidate is Brandon Crawford of the San Francisco Giants, who is hitting .268 with six home runs and 49 RBI and a 2.5 WAR. Crawford is also having a remarkable season on the defensive side with just four errors despite handling the ball more than 300 times.

Dexter Fowler of the Cubs, Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals and Yoenis Cespedes of the New York Mets are leading the National League outfielders, while veteran Yadier Molina of the St. Louis Cardinals and Buster Posey of the Giants are engaged in a taut battle behind the plate. Going into the final voting period, Molina leads by about 5,000 votes.

On the American League side, first baseman Eric Hosmer of the Kansas City Royals, second baseman Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros, shortstop Xander Bogaerts of the Boston Red Sox and third baseman Manny Machado of the Baltimore Orioles all have substantial leads at their respective positions. 

While Machado is having an excellent season with a .330 average, 18 homers, 46 RBI and a 3.9 WAR, he is playing shortstop for the first-place Orioles and not third base, as he has done in the past. Josh Donaldson of the Toronto Blue Jays has been hammering the ball with a .290 average, 17 homers and 51 RBI, and he has a substantial 4.1 WAR rating.

Two-time All-Star MVP Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels leads the way among the American League outfielders, with Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. of the Boston Red Sox holding down the other two spots.

However, that’s a close race as Lorenzo Cain of the Royals, Mark Trumbo of the Orioles and Jose Bautista of the Blue Jays are all within striking distance.

Salvador Perez has more than 3.75 million votes and is running away with the AL catching honors, and David Ortiz of the Red Sox is leading the way at the designated hitter spot.

While all three American League outfielders have legitimate credentials, it’s hard not to like the job that Ian Desmond has done for the Texas Rangers so far this season. Desmond is hitting .326 with 14 home runs and 51 RBI, and he has a 3.4 WAR for the surging Rangers.

However, Desmond has slightly more than 1.1 million votes, and that leaves him in eighth place among outfielders, and he will have to depend on being named to the team rather than voted in.

Final All-Star voting results will be announced July 5 at 7 p.m. ET.

Predictions

Look for all the current leaders in the American League to hold on to their positions. Cain has a chance to overcome Betts in the outfield, but the Red Sox outfielder has 16 home runs and 54 RBI, while Cain has eight homers and 39 RBI. That should be enough to help Betts retain his position.

The National League catching position may be decided by 1,000 votes or fewer. While both Molina and Posey have had substantial careers and are deserving from a long-term perspective, Posey has eight homers and 36 RBI, while Molina has just one home run and 26 RBI. Posey deserves to get the majority of the votes before voting closes June 30.

Neither of those players compares to Wilson Ramos of the Washington Nationals from an offensive perspective. Ramos has belted 12 home runs and driven in 43 runs along with a .343 average. However, Ramos is more than 280,000 votes behind Posey, and he is not going to make up that ground.

All WAR ratings provided by Baseball-Reference.com.

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