Monday, June 22
Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today’s edition is brought to you by David Adler.
The second All-Star Ballot update just dropped. Here’s where things stand entering the final week of Phase 1 voting.
If you haven’t voted yet, get those ballots in now — the first phase of All-Star voting ends this Thursday at noon ET. At the end of Phase 1, the top overall vote-getter in each league earns an automatic starting spot in this year’s All-Star Game. As for everyone else, the top two players at each position (and the top six outfielders) move on to Phase 2 of the voting, where it’s a head-to-head runoff to be named a 2026 All-Star starter.
A few races in particular have started to heat up since the first ballot update last week. These are the three biggest things that have changed in the All-Star standings:
1) There’s a new No. 1 in the American League
Guess who’s gotten the most All-Star votes of any AL player.
No, it’s not Yordan Alvarez. Nope, it’s not Aaron Judge either. It’s Ernie Clement!
We’re not pulling your leg. Clement is far from the biggest name on the AL ballot. But the Blue Jays’ fan-favorite second baseman has taken over the top overall spot in the All-Star vote.
Clement has received 2,054,130 votes so far, making him the only American League player to break the 2 million mark. He’s your leader in the clubhouse to earn the AL’s automatic starting spot in the All-Star Game. (Shohei Ohtani is leading in the National League, and MLB overall, with 2,310,735 votes.) Clement would be a first-time All-Star.
Since the last ballot update, Clement has leapfrogged both Alvarez (1,974,459 votes), who was in the lead for the AL a week ago, and Judge (1,788,499 votes), who won the auto-start last year for the AL. He’s also passed Mike Trout (1,735,051 votes) since last week.
2) Soto on the rise in the NL outfield
Juan Soto has jumped into the top 6 in the NL outfield voting, putting the Mets superstar in line to advance to Phase 2.
Soto was on the outside looking in at the last ballot update, when he was sitting in ninth place among NL outfielders. But now, with 947,033 votes, he’s passed Corbin Carroll, James Wood and Jordan Walker to move into sixth place.
Soto is a four-time All-Star, but this would be his first All-Star Game with the Mets. He’s batting .301 with an NL-best .973 OPS this season.
3) Arozarena joins J-Rod in the AL outfield top 6
Julio Rodríguez was the only Mariners outfielder in the AL’s top six at the first All-Star Ballot update. But now his teammate Arozarena is right there with him.
Arozarena was in seventh place a week ago, with Rodríguez in sixth, but both Mariners outfielders have moved up a spot, putting them both in position to reach Phase 2 of the All-Star voting. Riley Greene, who was ahead of them, has dropped out of the top six, going from fifth to ninth.
Both Arozarena and Rodríguez were All-Stars last year for Seattle.
See the complete latest All-Star standings here >>
GAMES OF THE NIGHT
Here are three games to watch tonight. For info on how to watch every game this season, go to MLB.com/Watch.
Astros at Blue Jays (7:07 p.m. ET, MLB.TV)
Two power-pitching aces go head-to-head in this one, as Houston’s Hunter Brown faces Toronto’s Dylan Cease. Brown was great in his return from injury last week, and Cease is in the AL Cy Young mix with a league-leading 110 strikeouts.
Guardians at White Sox (7:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV)
The Guardians and White Sox meet for the first time this season as they battle for first place in the AL Central. Cleveland holds a one-game lead over the surprising Sox entering the series opener in Chicago, and the Guards have ace Gavin Williams on the mound (9-4, 3.83 ERA, 103 strikeouts).
Braves at Padres (10:10 p.m. ET, ESPN)
A big series between two NL contendersstarts tonight in San Diego. The Braves, who are 20 games over .500 at 48-28 and have MLB’s best winning percentage, just took two of three from a fellow first-place team in the Brewers. The Padres are a half-game out of the third NL Wild Card spot, but star players like Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado are starting to heat up.
SKUBAL A TRADE LOCK? NOT SO FAST
There’s already been a ton of trade smokearound Tarik Skubal. But is the Tigers ace really a lock to get traded?
Maybe not.
There’s a simple reason why Detroit dealing Skubal is far from a guarantee: The Tigers are playing a lot better baseball.
Yes, Detroit is 33-44 and in fourth place in the AL Central. This season has been a big disappointment. But the team has quietly started to turn things around.
Entering tonight’s series opener against the Yankees (6:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV), the Tigers are 11-6 in June, a .647 winning percentage. They have the best record in the AL this month and the third-best record in the Majors. They’re five games out of a Wild Card spot, and their playoff odds are up to 22%, more than double what they were at the end of May.
With the Trade Deadline six weeks away, everything might come down to the Tigers’ upcoming stretch of games. Detroit plays six of its next 10 games against the Yankees, with four games against the Astros in between.
The results of those 10 games could set the Skubal trade market.
WINNER-TAKE-ALL IN COLLEGE WORLD SERIES
We’ve got one more game for you to watch tonight, but it’s not a Major League game.
The Men’s College World Series Finals has come down to a winner-take-all Game 3.
North Carolina faces Oklahoma (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) with an NCAA championship on the line. The Tar Heels forced a deciding third game by beating the Sooners yesterday to even the best-of-three series.
UNC is looking for its first-ever College World Series championship. Oklahoma last won a national title in 1994.
With the MLB Draft coming up in a few weeks, this will also be the last chance to see some of the top college prospects in game action.
AROUND THE LEAGUE
Here are some of the big things that happened around the Majors this weekend.
• The Phillies’ big bats erupted for a historic performance in Saturday’s 15-3 win over the Mets. Not only did Bryce Harper hit for his first career cycle, but Kyle Schwarber smashed three home runs — including two in the same inning.
• The Braves did what no other team had been able to do for two months: They took down Jacob Misiorowski. Atlanta handed the Brewers’ electric young ace his first loss since April 19 on Friday night — with Misiorowski coming off one of the most dominant games of all time in his previous start.
• Chase Burns took down the Yankees at Yankee Stadium yesterday, almost exactly a year after his MLB debut, which was also against the Bronx Bombers. The 23-year-old has already come a long way since then, from showing flashes of his talent in 2025 to becoming one of the top young pitchers in the league in 2026.
• JJ Wetherholt continued his stellar rookie campaign with a two-homer game against the Royals in yesterday’s series finale. But Wetherholt’s NL Rookie of the Year case is just as much about his defense as his offense.
• Cam Schlittler was dominant yet again on Friday, collecting a career-high 13 strikeouts against Cincinnati while lowering his ERA to an AL-best 1.71. The Yankees ace even wowed NBA champion Knick Josh Hart, who posted on X during the game: “Schlitty is the Cy Young winner hands down.”
DAILY WALKOFF
Put your baseball brain to the test with Daily Walkoff, where you can find 30 brand-new trivia puzzles every day, one for each team. Play Daily Walkoff >>
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RJ Hamster 