Mets’ Juan Soto To Start All-Star Game

[Steve Drumwright]

 

The fans made Juan Soto an All-Star again.

The New York Mets’ left fielder was voted in as a starter for the NL in the July 14 All-Star Game at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. This is Soto’s fifth All-Star selection and third in four years after missing in 2025, his first season with the Mets.

Soto, who missed a chunk of April with a strained right calf, entered Saturday with a slash line of .297/.406/.565 with 18 homers and 41 RBIs. His .406 on-base percentage and .971 OPS is tops in the NL.

Soto was the only Mets player named to the team with the dismal performance by the team thus far.

The nine starters for each team were determined by two rounds of fan balloting, with Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and Toronto Blue Jays second baseman Ernie Clement getting automatically selected to start by virtue of leading the first round in the NL and AL, respectively.

The 23 reserves, which includes 12 pitchers as that position is not up for voting, are selected by player voting and the Commissioner's Office, which ensures that each team has a representative in the game.

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[Cowtipper]

Huzzah! He was ripped off last year by not making it.  Glad he got in as a starter this year. Each All-Star Game, I like to see which players reach or exceed 5 career All-Star Games. Five is a nice number where one starts to see that that player has 'recognized' greatness, not just statistical greatness or sabermetric greatness. Here are the 2026 All-Stars with 5+ ASGs under their belt now:

Mike Trout: 12
Freddie Freeman: 10
Chris Sale: 10
Aroldis Chapman: 9
Bryce Harper: 9
Aaron Judge: 8
Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.: 6
Shohei Ohtani: 6
Juan Soto: 5

Note the lack of pitchers with 5+ ASGs. We're in an era where there aren't too many career-great pitchers. There are season-great pitchers, or three-four year-peak great pitchers, but not a lot of career-great pitchers.

With 12 ASGs, Mike Trout joins pretty elite company. He's the first guy with 12+ ASGs since Miguel Cabrera. This is also the first All-Star Game since 2023 that has featured 3+ guys with 10 or more ASGs. The three then were Cabrera, Trout and Albert Pujols. 

[smg58]

Other than playing Springer's sinking blooper into a little league home run, Soto has not been the problem.  Offensively, he's been great despite getting basically zero help.  While being 33-37 with him in the lineup is far from good, it shows that the season would be a lot more salvageable if the team hadn't completely fallen apart without him.