Jacob Wilson Leads Kansas City's Bobby Witt Jr. in All Star Ballot Update

Athletics rookie shortstop Jacob Wilson has been compared locally to New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge over the course of the season. Not for his power numbers, but both players have been atop the leaderboards in batting average, and subsequently total hits, in recent weeks. That's a comparison that Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. had last season as he battled Judge for the AL MVP award.

Heading into Monday's games, Judge has 105 hits and is batting .367 on the year, while Wilson has 102 hits and is batting .349. He has been held hitless for two straight games, which is about as big of a slump as Wilson typically has. He's gone hitless in back-to-back games just four times this season, though one of those stretches went four games. Still, this is fairly uncommon and is why he's one of the best bats in the American League.

On Monday morning, while the A's were having their groundbreaking ceremony in Las Vegas, Major League Baseball released an updated vote tally for the All Star Game.

Jacob Wilson still leads Witt among American League shortstops, holding an edge of 1,120,791 to 868,584, a difference of 252,207 votes. The way that the voting works these days, is that the top vote getter in each league will be named a starter automatically. The top two vote-getters at each position will advance to Phase 2 of the process, with the winner being named the starter at their position.

Phase 2 begins on June 30, and both appear to be fairly locked in to making it to the next round of voting. Houston's Jeremy Peña (608,345), Toronto's Bo Bichette (588,324), and Detroit's Trey Sweeney (323,042) round out the top five among AL shortstops.

In addition to Wilson, the A's also have DH Brent Rooker within striking distance of making it to the next round of voting. While Baltimore's Ryan O'Hearn leads the way by a healthy margin with 937,205 votes, New York's Ben Rice (409,336) holds a slim lead over Rooker's 396,290. That's a difference of just 13,046.

Rooker has really started to heat up since the beginning of May, batting .286 with a .375 OBP, seven homers, 29 runs scored and 24 runs driven in. His 140 wRC+ (100 is league average) in that span is just behind O'Hearn's 142. After a hot start, Ben Rice is batting .223 with a .282 OBP and a 93 wRC+ over the past month and a half.