3 Blue Jays Deserve All-Star Spots—They Might Surprise You
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Blue Jays fans have received some criticism on social media for stuffing the All-Star ballot box.
The final round of fan voting, which ends Thursday at noon Eastern time, includes Alejandro Kirk at catcher, Vladimir Guerrero at 1st base, Andres Gimenez at shortstop, Kazuma Okamoto at third base, George Springer at DH, and outfielders Daulton Varsho and Jesus Sanchez.
Ernie Clement has already locked up a spot on the team thanks to being the American League's leading vote-getter in the first round of fan balloting.
Major League Baseball released the final round tallies to date yesterday. Of the Blue Jays on the final ballot only Guerrero is currently in the lead.
With voting wrapping up at Thursday at 12 pm ET, let's check in on Phase 2 of All-Star voting for the American League!
— MLB (@MLB) June 30, 2026
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Six Blue Jays Finalists Who Clearly Do NOT Deserve to Be All-Stars
Six of these players very clearly do not deserve to have made the final round of balloting, let alone the All-Star team, based on their 2026 numbers.
If Guerrero Jr. maintains his lead over Ben Rice, he will be a completely undeserving All-Star. Given that he has been held out of several games recently because of back tightness, Vladdy would be better served to sit out the game and allow a far more deserving replacement like Ben Rice, Nick Kurtz, Yandy Diaz, or Wilson Contreras to take his spot on the roster.
Three Blue Jays Who Deserve To Be All-Stars
Ernie Clement, 2B
Clement leads the league in doubles (21), is third in hits (94), and is fourth in average (.297) and is the league's toughest hitter to strike out.
As great a story as he is, going from DFA'd to the All-Star Game, his being the leading vote-getter speaks more to the weakness of the AL field at second base, given his WAR is only 1.0.
Jose Altuve is having a down year, and Gleyber Torres has played just 43 games. Jazz Chisholm is having a down year. Mariners second baseman Cole Young may be another unsung second baseman joining Clement on the All-Star team.
Dylan Cease, SP
The 30-year-old Cease has surprisingly never made an All-Star game before despite two Top 5 finishes in Cy Young Award voting.
Cease deserves to make his first All-Star team this year. He leads the league in strikeouts with 128 and leads starters in K/9 with 13.8, which, if he had enough innings to qualify, would be the highest K/9 for an American League starter since Gerrit Cole in 2019. Among pitchers with enough innings to qualify, Jacob deGrom is second at 10/8 K/9, three strikeouts per nine less than Cease.
His ERA is 3.02, which would rank 7th if he had pitched enough innings to qualify, but his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) would be first among AL starters. And with 83.1 IP Cease may well have enough innings to qualify by the time the All-Star game is actually played (he would need 86 right now to qualify).
Louis Varland, RP
Varland leads AL relievers with a 2.7 WAR, higher even than Cease as well as Mason Miller (2.1), who is often regarded as the game's most dominant closer. Varland is the biggest no-brainer All-Star on the Blue Jays.
Varland has been dominant out of the Blue Jays' bullpen, reaching triple digits with his fastball on the way to a 0.98 ERA, .96 WHIP, 64 K's in 46 IP, and 17 saves. At the midway point, he would be the Blue Jays' MVP as the best reliever in baseball so far this season.
Close but No Quesadilla
Kazuma Okamoto - 3B
Okamoto has been the feel-good breakout story on the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays, and their only reliable source of power. He is part of a seven-way tie for 7th in the AL in home runs with 19 and has picked things up after a slow start.
He eats quesadillas before games. At the urging of Myles Straw, he has embraced Ella Langley's Choosing Texas as his walkup song. He chose to sign with the Blue Jays in part because he put all 30 MLB team logos in front of his young daughter, and she picked the Blue Jays.
He has made a difficult cultural adjustment look easy, becoming one of the more popular Blue Jays in the clubhouse.
Okamoto, however, significantly trails both Junior Caminero and the White Sox's Miguel Vargas in WAR at 2.0 versus Caminero's (3.3) and Miguel Vargas's (3.1). Vargas is part of that seven-way tie with 19 home runs and has led the surprising White Sox to the top of the American League Central.
If the League decides to put three players at the hot corner on the team, Okamoto would make it. More likely, though, they go with two. In that scenario, Okamoto is close but does not make the cut.
But even if Okamoto does make the AL All-Star team, no matter how many Blue Jays are in the Midsummer Classic, the lineup, especially Guerrero Jr., has to pick up the pace. If it does not, there won't be any Blue Jays in this year's Fall Classic.
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Adam Steinmetz writes about the Toronto Blue Jays for SI.com. Adam is also the editor and publisher of the Boston Sunday Sports Section, a weekly digital publication covering the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. A two-time winner of the Best Collegiate Sports Writer award in Philadelphia, he began his career with freelance work for The Philadelphia Daily News and The Palm Beach Post before building a successful career outside of journalism. He returned to sports writing last year, contributing to Pitcher List—including coverage of the Toronto Blue Jays—before launching Authorenticity on Substack, where he explores the human stories within baseball. The Boston Sunday Sports Section is his most ambitious project — the thinking fan’s modern Sunday Sports Section focused on the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins.