Yankees' Paul Goldschmidt's All-Star Case Is Stronger Than Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had a 2025 postseason for the ages. His grand slam against the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series cemented itself as an iconic one in Blue Jays history. He followed that up with a strong World Series showing, so if there ever was a time for an entire country to get behind the Jays following an iconic run, it's now. Hence, Guerrero is the leading vote-getter at first base for the AL All-Star team as of Monday's update.

There's just one issue with this.

Guerrero isn't the best player at the position, and, like his Jays, he is having a bad year by his standards. Starting over him should be Ben Rice if this were about the numbers, but he isn't the only member of the Yankees who deserves it more than him. Paul Goldschmidt has earned that honor as well.

Paul Goldschmidt should start over Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in MLB All-Star Game

As of Thursday afternoon, Goldschmidt is having a renaissance season, and among first basemen, his .301 average is first, his .368 OBP is seventh, his .560 slugging is second, and his 157 wRC+ is fourth. His plus-9 batting run value is in the 79th percentile this season.

Paul Goldschmidt doubles the @Yankees lead with a homer 💥 pic.twitter.com/9Cbu3cm6AX
— MLB (@MLB) June 18, 2026

His defensive metrics have also been stellar in 2026. Goldschmidt owns a plus-2 outs above average, per Baseball Savant, and the only first basemen ahead of him are Pete Alonso and Nolan Schanuel, who both sit at plus-3.

Guerrero, on the other hand, barely cracks the top 10 in most offensive categories. Outside of Yankee first baseman, names like Nick Kurtz, Willson Contreras, Munetaka Murakami, Jonathan Aranda, and Pete Alonso are all more deserving than Guerrero. The Blue Jays' slugger's .280 average is fifth, his .368 OBP is sixth, and his .362 slugging is 18th. Guerrero's 106 wRC+ is also 10th. It's well behind the names mentioned here.

Despite the numbers, he is leading the AL at first with 603,014 votes as of this week. Rice is a full 100,000 votes behind him with 509,830.

All-Star voting update:

Via @BNightengale pic.twitter.com/Uase9Mj8eg
— Underdog MLB (@UnderdogMLB) June 15, 2026

MLB All-Star voting is a popularity contest, of course, and with a whole country behind Guerrero, it's not surprising that he has garnered as many votes as he has. A championship run—albeit one that fell flat—will put a lot of eyes on a player for the foreseeable future, and rarely are there as many on a player as the one who put a whole country on his back.

Even with that, all of this skews things in ways that sometimes cause undeserving players to statistically find their way into the game. This is a bit of a nuisance when the All-Star Game is a contractual incentive. Goldschmidt's pact doesn't have one, and his is just about reaching certain plate appearance plateaus, but it isn't outside the realm of possibility for a player to have that.

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