Early All Star voting totals are out and the Cincinnati Reds don’t exist

The 2017 Major League Baseball Popularity Contest All Star Game is just about six weeks away, and voting has been ongoing for weeks now. The early voting totals were released today, and to the surprise of no one, Bryce Harper has more votes than any other NL player.

Also to the surprise of no one, the lists of top vote-getters by position are almost completely devoid of any Cincinnati Reds.

MASN’s Mark Zuckerman conveniently tweeted out the totals to date, which is great if you’re a fan of either the Chicago Cubs or the Washington Nationals (and, I suppose, if you’re actually a fan of the All Star Game itself).

Only Zack Cozart - the NL’s leader in bWAR by a position player - makes an appearance as a Red, and he sits in 3rd place in SS voting behind Corey Seager and Addison Russell, (though his 220 some thousand votes to date sit some 400 thousand short of Seager’s current total). There’s no Joey Votto among the top 5 1Bs, no Eugenio Suarez in the 3B mix, and despite the entire Cincinnati OF ranking among the top 13 in fWAR among their NL peers, none of them even cracked the top 15 in voting totals.

Teams that win games, divisions, and championships usually fuel their fans with voting diesel. Big market teams that show any glimmer of competitiveness give their stars ample support. The Reds, and Cincinnati itself, aren’t really either of those at the time being, so all of this really makes sense.

When the voting ends and the final roster decisions are made to accommodate at least one player from every team, Cozart will probably make the cut. Heck, maybe Raisel Iglesias will, too. But for now, the team that sits tied atop the team fWAR leaderboards as having the best set of position players in all of baseball - not just the NL - sits shut out completely in the race to have even one All Star starter.

(If you’d actually like to cast a ballot or five, you can do so by clicking here.)