Hurry! All-MLB Team voting ends today, 4 CT
MILWAUKEE – Most of Major League Baseball’s hardware has already been handed out, but awards season is not over quite yet. Four Brewers players from the 2019 season are up for the inaugural All-MLB Team, which will be chosen in part by baseball fans.
All four of the Brewers’ nominees were All-Stars in July: catcher Yasmani Grandal, relief ace Josh Hader, third baseman Mike Moustakas and outfielder Christian Yelich.
The selection process for the 2019 All-MLB Team runs through 4 p.m. CT today, with 50 percent of the vote coming from fans and 50 percent coming from a panel of experts. You may vote once every 24 hours between now and when voting ends. The inaugural All-MLB Team will be announced on Dec. 10 at baseball’s annual Winter Meetings in San Diego.
There will be a first team and second team All-MLB, and voters are asked only to consider performance during the regular season when casting their ballots. Each team will include one selection at each position (including designated hitter and three outfielders, regardless of specific outfield position), five starting pitchers and two relievers.
The Brewers’ nominees played significant roles in the team making the postseason for the second straight year, and the third time this decade. They were powered by Yelich, who won a second consecutive batting title, led the Majors in OPS and a slew of other categories while belting 44 home runs, stealing 30 bases and finishing runner-up to the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger in National League MVP Award balloting.
“I’ve never seen anyone this good at baseball for this long,” Ryan Braun said in the wake of one of Yelich’s big games.
When Yelich went down on Sept. 10 with a season-ending right knee injury, Grandal and Moustakas did their part to keep the Brewers on a winning path. Grandal earned a four-year, $73 million contract with the White Sox last week on the strength of another strong season, in which he finished second on the team to Yelich with a .380 on-base percentage while breaking the single-season franchise record for home runs as a catcher with 28. Moustakas also packed punch, hitting 35 homers as well as compiling 87 RBIs and a career-best .845 OPS.
When the hitters built a lead, it was often Hader who converted the final outs. He was the NL’s Reliever of the Year after logging a career-high 37 saves and striking out 138 batters in 75 2/3 regular-season innings. His 47.8 strikeout percentage ranked fourth-best all-time for a pitcher who worked at least 35 innings in a season, pushing Hader’s own 46.7 percent in 2018 down one spot.