Royals Could Have Seven Starters in All-Star Game
The mid-summer classic will soon be here and the American League’s Kansas City Royals may have a monopoly on starters for the All-Star Game. The Royals used an appearance in the World Series last season, this season’s strong start and a few fireworks thrown in to push the team towards a possible record-breaking lineup at the All-Star Game in July.
Seven Royals players are headed toward a starting spot in the game scheduled for July 14 in Cincinnati which would set a new record for starters from a single team.
Salvador Perez (C), Eric Hosmer (1B), Alcides Escobar (SS), Mike Moustakas (3B) and Kendrys Morales (DH) all were leading their specific positions as of Monday.
Add to that, Lorenzo Cain first amongst outfielders in the AL and Alex Gordon in third behind only Mike Trout the 
reigning MVP and there is a strong chance seven Royals could start.
Hosmer called it exciting prior to the Royals game on Monday at Minnesota. He said just seeing your name on a ballot was exciting to him, let along so many teammates leading their respective positions.
Omar Infante the starting second baseman for Kansas City is second at his position in the balloting, just 150,000 votes behind Jose Altuve the reigning battling champion in the AL.
The Major League Baseball front office said the current record for starters on one team is six. The New York Yankees in 1939 fielded six starters for the game. In 1957, the fans elected 7 Cincinnati Reds players to start, but after realizing 50% of the ballots were from Cincinnati, the commissioner added Hank Aaron and Willie Mays to the starting lineup taking the place of two outfielders for the Reds.
Voting will continue until July 2. The starters will be announced 4th of July weekend.
Perez is the leading voter getter currently with 4.4 million, while Cain has 4.2 million and Moustakas 4 million. They are the only 3 MLB players topping the 4 million mark.
The Royals had struggled for years until last season when their playoff drought of 28 years was ended and they reached the World Series only to lose to the San Francisco Giants.
They began this season with seven straight wins and led the AL Central until last week. They also were in the headlines for a brawl they had with the Chicago White Sox and three straight games of bench emptying incidents in games versus the Oakland A’s during April.
