Cleveland Indians: What is going on with ASG voting for Francisco Lindor?

Cleveland Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor is supposed to be one of the game’s rising stars, yet he trails mightily in All-Star Game voting.

Something strange is happening with this year’s All-Star Game voting.

The latest update came out Tuesday and to no one’s surprise, fans saw that Jose Ramirez is dominating in the polls at third base and is poised to start in this year’s event.

The strange part is what is happening at shortstop.

Are Cleveland Indians fans just not voting for Lindor? Even Michael Brantley has more votes than the shortstop, and I don’t see Brantley as a big name outside of Cleveland to the point where fans determine he must be on their ballot.

Francisco Lindor won’t win the MVP Award this year but he is in the discussion of ending up in the top five of the voting at the end of the year.

Stats aside, it is just strange to see Lindor have so few votes when Ramirez is up over 1.3 million. This is not solely on Indians fans, but it just doesn’t make much sense to me from a logic standpoint.

And for those fans who love sabermetric stats, Lindor is clearly the best shortstop in terms of WAR. Yet here he is, losing out to traditional stars riding on their reputations. Lindor is fifth in all of baseball in WAR, according to baseball-reference.

Following this team for so long, I am used to seeing talented players miss out on the All-Star Game due to the voting process. But Lindor is known all over baseball. Is there a conspiracy against him?

The likely answer is that Manny Machado is the easy choice for fans just rushing to fill in their ballots, while Carlos Correa and Didi Gregorius have the advantage of playing in giant markets.

Next: 2018 Cleveland Indians: Contenders or pretenders?

There is still time to vote and get Lindor in contention to be a starter, but right now he is in danger of missing the game altogether. And that is just not right.