The White Sox are in first place and one of baseball's best stories, but the first MLB All-Star voting update suggests many fans still aren't buying into Chicago's breakout season.
At the beginning of the 2026 season, the baseball world was a bit hesitant to get on board with the Chicago White Sox.
After three straight years of losing 100-plus games and setting the all-time record for losses in a single season back in 2024, the White Sox had developed a reputation as one of the league's bottom feeders. So even when Chicago got off to a promising start and was flirting with a .500 record at the beginning of May, there were plenty of doubters to go around.
The White Sox were still being ranked near the bottom of national power rankings, and a handful of White Sox stars were still lacking the national recognition they deserved.
We've now reached the middle of June with the White Sox sitting at 38-32 in first place in the AL Central. They also just took four out of five games against the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves, the two best teams in the National League. Since April 27, the White Sox have gone 27-15 with a plus-41 run differential, and the rest of baseball is beginning to recognize that the White Sox are, in fact, legit.
But even with all the love and national attention the White Sox have been getting lately, it seems baseball fans at large still don't have the proper respect for the White Sox players who have been the catalysts of this turnaround. In the first voting update for the fan vote of the 2026 MLB All-Star Game, White Sox players were largely disrespected.
Miguel Vargas leads all American League third basemen in fWAR this season at 2.5. He's a top-25 player in baseball by fWAR. Vargas is also tied for the most home runs among third basemen with 16 and leads all third basemen in RBIs with 44. Yet when it comes to fan voting, he's in third place in the American League behind Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays and Kazuma Okamoto of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Somehow, Munetaka Murakami has the third-most votes among American League first basemen. He's 170,000 votes behind Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who has only three home runs this season in 246 at-bats and currently owns a .737 OPS. Murakami hit 20 home runs in just 200 at-bats and has a .938 OPS.
White Sox second baseman Chase Meidroth is tied for the highest fWAR among all American League second basemen at 1.6. Among AL second basemen, Meidroth is also third in home runs, tied for second in wRC+, and second in hits. So maybe he shouldn't be the All-Star Game starter, but Meidroth being eighth in voting among AL second basemen is flat-out disrespectful.
Colson Montgomery is fourth in voting among American League shortstops, but he has half as many votes as Blue Jays shortstop Andrés Giménez, who has a .620 OPS this season.
A big part of this is how much favor the Blue Jays are getting. Having the entire country of Canada spamming ballots for every Blue Jays player seems to be paying off. But in general, when you have a team like the White Sox, who are the most exciting story in baseball this season, with a group of talented position players powering one of the game's best offenses, you generally see a wave of baseball fans voting those players into the All-Star Game.
That's not the case this year. And it's a pretty big piece of evidence that the White Sox still have plenty of doubters across the baseball landscape.
