Cal Baseball: Two Years After First Deserving It, Marcus Semien is an MLB All-Star

Marcus Semien finished third in the 2019 American League MVP voting but has never made an All-Star team.

Until now.

The 30-year-old Cal grad, now in his first season with the Toronto Blue Jays after six years with the Oakland A’s, was the overwhelming winner at second base in fan voting.

Major League Baseball announced the All-Star starters on Thursday and Semien was the American League selection at second,

He received 52 percent of the vote, compared to 33 percent for Jose Altuve of the Astros and 15 percent for DJ LeMahieu of the Yankees.

Semien will be the first Cal alum to play in the game since Jeff Kent in 2005, the last of his five All-Star appearances.

The All-Star Game will be played July 13 in Denver.

It’s amazing that Semien has never played in the All-Star Game. In 2019, he had a career year, batting .285 with 33 home runs and 92 RBI. He put together an .892 OPS and led the American League with 747 plate appearances, all while playing for an A’s team that won 97 games.

But Semien, playing shortstop in those days, wasn’t even among the top-3 in fan voting in 2019.

Having signed a one-year, $18 million free-agent deal with Toronto this offseason, Semien is assembling his best season yet. He’s hitting .291 with 21 doubles, 20 home runs, 60 runs scored and 52 RBI.

His on-base and slugging percentages so far are at career-high levels. Six years removed from making 35 errors as the A’s shortstop, Semien has just four miscues in 283 chances at second base (70 games) and shortstop (10 games).

He went 3-for-4 with a double and a homer on Thursday as the All-Star starters were announced.

Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins was thrilled by Semien’s selection.

“He just puts a smile on my face. I think Marcus is good for baseball, and he’s been exceptional for us,” Atkins told MLB.com. “He is a calming, steady influence from not only the first minute he walks into the clubhouse, but when he taps his bat on the plate and when he toes it up at second base.

“He’s been exceptional defensively, he’s a very stable decision-maker offensively and defensively. That doesn’t happen by chance or just because. He’s played the game for a long time, and he works really hard at it.”

Semien’s big season could lead to the lucrative, long-term deal the A’s declined to offer him last offseason after his 2020 statistics dipped.

The website FiveThirtyEight wrote about how Semien bet on himself by accepting the Blue Jay’s one-year contract . . . and won.

“The contract presented two options for Semien: a risk if things don’t go well, and a boon if things do. . . . Semien is getting results, and the Blue Jays may have struck the biggest bargain of the 2020 free agent class.

“While the Blue Jays have underperformed expectations so far this season, Semien is making the best of an opportunity to rebuild his value and test the free-agent waters again at this season’s end. If Semien keeps this up, he could receive one of the richer paydays of this year’s crop of free agents.”

We’ll see if Ross Atkins will be quite as effusive in his praise of Semien at the bargaining table next winter.

Cover photo of Marcus Semien by Sam Navarro, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo