Jacob Wilson All Star Vote Update

A's shortstop Jacob Wilson is batting Kansas City Royals' shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. to become the starter at their position for the American League in this year's All Star Game

Jun 20, 2025; West Sacramento, California, USA; Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson (5) runs to first base during the game against the Cleveland Guardians at Sutter Health Park. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images | Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images

A's rookie shortstop Jacob Wilson led the voting at shortstop in the American League through the first phase of voting, but the way that MLB All Star voting works is that the first phase of the voting is to determine the top two vote-getters, and then those two players advance to the second phase to determine who will be the starter at each position.

The player with the most votes overall in each league, this year Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, get a pass on phase two, and are automatically the starters at their positions.

Phase two voting began on Monday, and roughly 24 hours later MLB provided an update to how things are going. Jacob Wilson is still ahead in the voting to become the starting AL shortstop over Kansas City's Bobby Witt Jr., but this time the vote counts have not been disclosed, so he could be running away with it, or they could be in a dead-even race.

Wilson won the first phase by around 500,000 votes, but this is a new round of voting, so who knows if he's keeping that kind of distance at the moment.

Both Wilson and Witt are having tremendous seasons. Last year the Kansas City Royals shortstop finished in second place in the AL MVP voting to Judge, and this season, while still solid, isn't quite up to that pace. Witt is batting .284 with a .337 OBP and 11 home runs this season, while also leading the league in doubles with 29.

By comparison, Wilson is batting .339 with a .380 OBP and nine home runs, but his real calling card, and potentially why he's gathered so much support, is that he doesn't strike out. Through 343 plate appearances, he's been called out on strikes just 26 times, good for a rate of 7.6%, which ranks third in all of baseball.

While Wilson has been better with the bat, holding a 138 to 122 edge in wRC+ (100 is league average), it's Witt that has the higher WAR total on FanGraphs with a 3.9 to 2.8 edge thanks to his defensive abilities. Witt ranks at No. 6 among all player in fWAR, while Wilson is still up there at No. 20.

It's hard to make a wrong decision here, and who you vote for will boil down to personal preference, but after debuting last season, Wilson added some bulk to his build over the offseason, and he's seeing that pay off in the first half of 2025. It could even end up landing him the starting spot at short in the All Star Game, a feat that has been accomplished just twice by an A's player since 1993.

Jason Giambi in 2000 and Josh Donaldson in 2014 are the previous two.

Phase two voting will run through Wednesday, July 2 at noon ET (9 a.m. PT), so we should have an answer to whether or not the A's can add a third player to that mix in the coming days.