• Luke Voit is on pace to start at first base for the American League with 696,164 votes, and in the runoff he could gather support from other precincts to push him ahead. Take the top two vote-getters from the Cardinals’ roster and they don’t, combined, have Voit’s total.

There is this misplaced notion that the larger markets have an edge when it comes to All-Star voting. Voting history doesn't show this. Motivated markets do. Wired markets do. It used to be that you could watch the vote totals ebb and flow based on who was home.

Way back in 1994, I drove from Mizzou to St. Louis just to drop in a huge stack of All-Star ballots on which I had written in Paul O’Neill on every single one. The gas was cheaper than the postage, I figured. (OK, OK, it was a lot of ballots.) Since online voting started and has now become the only way to vote, we’ve seen strong voting from Seattle, San Francisco, and other tech cities. Milwaukee has always been good at mobilizing the vote, and not too long ago Kansas City did with a great voting initiative that almost filled the AL starting lineup with Royals.

The Cardinals’ electioneering has lagged behind similar markets when it comes to motivating voters, and year after recent year their players vote totals show it.