It’s hard to believe the 2015 All Star Game was almost 10 years ago. Harder to believe, both then and now, were the circumstances leading up to the game where it looked like the Kansas City Royals might have 8 starting players on the American League team. The list of “almosts” for the 2015 MLB All Star Game included Omar Infante at second base, despite his .220 batting average that year.
While the Royals were one game short of 90 wins in 2014 and were leading the AL Central going into the 2015 All Star Game, Kansas City hadn’t fielded an all star lineup for a number of years before that. There was a stretch from 2004-2012 where the Royals consistently finished under .500 with a few years where they won less than 60 games.
MLB maintains the rule of requiring at least one player to represent each team, which gives the fans something to care about. The caliber of these selections is sometimes suspect. The Royals were represented by Mark Redman in 2006. Maybe the best thing that can be said about his single season in KC was that he contributed 11 wins to the 62 games the team won that year. Mike MacDougal in 2003 and Ken Harvey in 2004 are even more unlikely All Stars than Redman.
All Star Ballot Stuffing?
When the first voting update came out in mid-May of 2015, the Royals had 5 players leading at their respective positions. This number peaked at 8 Royals players leading their positions. Back then, this was causing a panic in the baseball world.
Baseball writers and bloggers were accusing Royals fans of ballot stuffing. It was never explained how this happened, though suspicion rests with the fact that 2015 was the first year MLB moved fan voting fully online. There’s a strong chance a tech savvy Royals fan was gaming the system.
Maybe the All Star lineup was simply prophetic. The Royals did go on to defeat the New York Mets in the World Series 4 games to 1 that year.
Josh Donaldson ultimately became the top vote getter, with what was a record 14,090,188 votes at that time. He also won the AL MVP as a Toronto Blue Jay that year, leading the league in runs, RBI, hit 41 homers, and ran a slash line of .297/.371/.568 on a Blue Jays team that won 93 games.
The 2015 American League All Stars were Royal
The American League team did include seven Royals players, including four Royals position players:
- Catcher: Salvador Perez
- Shortstop: Alcides Escobar
- Outfield: Lorenzo Cain
- Outfield: Alex Gordon
Third baseman Mike Moustakas made the reserve list as the last player in and pitchers Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera rounded out the list. Royals players were not a meaningful factor in American League team’s 2015 All Star Game 6-3 win. They did benefit from AL home team advantage when they ultimately reached the World Series in the fall of 2015.
One other notable event at the 2015 MLB All Star game in Cincinnati, Ohio was an appearance by Pete Rose. While he remained banned from baseball throughout his life, Commissioner Bud Selig did not prohibit Rose from taking part in a pre-game ceremony in the city where he was a 13-time all star.
