How Are MLB All-Stars Selected? Voting and Rosters
How MLB All-Stars are selected: the fan vote for starters, the player ballot for reserves and pitchers, the league's final picks and the 32-man roster rules.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished MLB Season & Roster Rules23 min read
- Players on each league's roster
- 32
- Position players and pitchers
- 20 and 12
- First All-Star Game
- July 6, 1933
- Most selections
- Hank Aaron, 25
In the middle of June 2015, with two weeks of balloting left, eight of the nine players leading the American League All-Star vote were Kansas City Royals. One of them, second baseman Omar Infante, was having about as poor a season as any everyday player in the league. Major League Baseball threw out more than 60 million ballots it judged improper, other fan bases woke up, and in the end four Royals were elected. It was the nearest the fan vote had come to breaking since 1957. It also obscured how little of an All-Star team the fans choose.
MLB All-Stars are selected by three different electorates. Fans vote online for the starting position players, nine in each league. Players, managers and coaches then vote for 17 more per league: a backup at every position and eight pitchers. The Commissioner's Office fills the last six places and makes sure every one of the 30 clubs has at least one representative. That produces a roster of 32 for the American League and 32 for the National League, each with 20 position players and 12 pitchers.
The three routes onto a 32-man All-Star roster
Think of the roster as built in layers, each laid down by a different group with different motives. The public picks the names it wants to see introduced on the foul line. The players pick the colleagues they respect. The league office patches the holes.
| Route | Who decides | Position players | Pitchers | Total per league |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fan vote | The public, voting online | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| Player ballot | Players, managers and coaches | 9 | 8 | 17 |
| League selections | The Commissioner's Office | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Whole roster | 20 | 12 | 32 |
- Fan vote28.1%
- Player ballot53.1%
- Commissioner's Office18.8%
Places per league under the selection rules in force since the designated hitter became universal in 2022. Replacements for injured players are added afterward.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Fan vote | 9places |
| Player ballot | 17places |
| Commissioner's Office | 6places |
More than half of every roster, then, is chosen inside clubhouses. Fans elect nine of 32, and no pitchers at all. The popular picture of an All-Star team as the winners of a public vote describes the starting lineup and nothing else.
The nine fan-elected starters are a catcher, the four infielders, three outfielders with no distinction between left, center and right, and a designated hitter. Until 2022 only the American League ballot carried a DH. When the National League adopted the position permanently that year, its ballot gained one too, and the two leagues' selection rules became identical for the first time, a convergence traced in our guide to the American League and the National League.
Managers, who once filled out the bottom of the roster themselves, now choose nobody. That power passed to the league office under the labor agreement that took effect in 2017, and with it went a perennial complaint: that an All-Star manager looked after his own players first.
MLB All-Star voting explained: the fan ballot in two phases
Paper ballots, the punch cards handed out at ballparks for 45 summers, were retired after 2014. The vote has been entirely online since, and from 2019 it has been run as two separate elections.
- Ballot opensLate May or early June. Every club nominates its regulars at each position.
- Phase 1Fans vote for several weeks. Running totals are published and clubs campaign for their players.
- Leading vote-getterThe top overall vote-getter in each league is declared a starter at once and takes no further part.
- Finalists namedThe top two at every other position, and the top outfielders, go forward to a second vote.
- Phase 2Vote totals reset to zero. A short runoff of a few days decides each position between the finalists.
- Starters announcedThe winners are revealed on television, followed some days later by the reserves and pitchers.
The two-phase format introduced in 2019, with the automatic starting place added in 2022. Dates and daily ballot limits are set by MLB each year.
Phase 1 is the long one. For three weeks or so in June, fans vote as often as the rules allow, which in recent years has meant several ballots a day, and MLB publishes updates showing who leads. When the phase closes, the top two vote-getters at each position in each league become finalists. In the outfield it is the top six, competing for three places. The first two runs of the format, in 2019 and 2021, sent three finalists forward at each position and nine in the outfield; the field was cut to two in 2022.
One player in each league skips the runoff. Since 2022 the leading overall vote-getter in the AL and in the NL has been awarded a starting place on the strength of Phase 1 alone. Aaron Judge and Ronald Acuña Jr. were the first two to earn it. If that player is an outfielder, the runoff in his league is cut to four finalists for the remaining two places.
Phase 2 is a sprint. Every total goes back to zero, the window is only a few days long, and the daily limit on ballots is tighter. A player can lead Phase 1 by a million votes and lose the runoff.
Why the league split the vote in two
Partly for television, which gets a finalists show and a results show out of what used to be a single announcement. But the reset does real work. Under the old single ballot, a lead built up in the first weeks, often by one well-organized fan base, was almost impossible to overturn, and a player who got hot in June had no chance of catching a famous name who was hitting .230. A short second vote among two candidates concentrates attention and gives the rest of the country a clear choice. It makes a repeat of Kansas City's 2015 campaign harder without preventing anyone from voting for their own team, which was always the point of having a fan ballot.
What the vote still does not do is measure merit, and nobody at the league pretends otherwise. Clubs with large followings elect more starters. That is the system working as designed.
The player ballot: how reserves and pitchers are chosen
During the same weeks of June, a quieter election takes place in the 30 clubhouses. Players, managers and coaches fill in a ballot for their own league, and its results account for more than half the roster.
Each league's ballot produces 17 All-Stars:
- one backup at each of the nine lineup positions, the designated hitter included
- five starting pitchers
- three relief pitchers
The position-player results interlock with the fan vote. Where the players' first choice at a position is the same man the fans elected to start, the place goes to the players' second choice. Where the fans and players disagree, both get in: the fans' choice starts and the players' choice is the reserve.
That second case is the interesting one. It happens every year at two or three positions, and it is usually the players who are right. Their ballot rewards the season in progress. A shortstop having a career year for a small-market club, unknown to the casual voter, tends to finish first among his peers and reach the game that way.
Pitchers come only through this route and the league's picks. The starters' ballot has never included them, for a practical reason: a ballot printed or programmed in May cannot anticipate which starters will be the best in the league by July, and nobody could say in advance who would be available to pitch.
The player ballot is not free of its own biases. It is collected in June, before the fan vote ends, so a strong first two months counts for more than a strong three. Veterans with reputations do well on it. Relievers with a high save total do better than relievers who have pitched more effectively in the seventh and eighth innings. Still, when players complain about an omission, the Player Ballot is rarely the route they are complaining about.
The results are generally announced as a list of winners, without vote totals. That spares the man who finished ninth among shortstops. It also means the players' reasoning is never open to the kind of inspection the public vote gets every week in June.
The last picks, and whether every MLB team gets an All-Star
With 26 places per league filled, the Commissioner's Office makes six more selections: four pitchers and two position players. These are not simply the six best players left. They are the picks that have to make the roster work.
First among the constraints is the rule that every club be represented. All 30 teams must have at least one All-Star, and in most years a handful have none after the fans and players have voted. Each of those clubs takes one of the league's six places. A last-place team's lone candidate, perhaps a setup reliever or a first baseman with decent numbers, goes to the game ahead of a more deserving player on a club that already has four.
People argue about this rule every July, and the argument against it is simple: it puts the 70th-best player in baseball on the field and leaves the 40th at home. The argument for it is commercial and a little sentimental. The game is sold to a national audience, and a fan in a city whose team is 20 games out has one reason to watch.
There is a better defense, less often made. The every-team rule is small. In a 32-man roster it moves a few places at most, and the players displaced are by definition marginal. A rule that changed who started would be a real distortion. This one decides who the last man in each bullpen is.
The league also uses its picks for balance. If the player ballot has produced no left-handed reliever, or the roster has one true shortstop, the last selections can repair it, since a manager has to get through nine innings with what he is given.
The 2022 labor agreement added one more power. The Commissioner may name an extra player to a roster in recognition of a career, as he did that summer with Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera, and a pick of that kind sits on top of the 32.
The Final Vote, which no longer exists
From 2002 through 2018 the last place on each roster was decided by a second online fan vote among five candidates the league put forward. It was popular, it produced a great deal of campaigning by clubs, and it was dropped when the two-phase starters' election arrived in 2019. Those places went back to the league office.
Roster shape and who runs the team
Twenty position players and 12 pitchers per league. The position-player count allows two men at every spot with a couple to spare, and the 12 pitchers are meant to be enough for nine innings at an inning apiece with a reserve in hand.
Catcher is the pinch point. A side has two by right, the fans' starter and the players' choice, and the league's selections often add a third, because nobody wants to finish an exhibition with an infielder behind the plate.
The roster has not always been 32. The 1933 teams had 18 players each. The number crept upward over the decades, reached 34 in 2010 after a run of games in which managers had run short of pitchers, and was trimmed to 32 by the 2017 agreement.
The managers are the two who won pennants the previous autumn, so the previous year's World Series is replayed, in a sense, from the dugouts. Each brings a coaching staff, usually his own coaches along with one or two managers from other clubs in his league. If a pennant-winning manager has since changed clubs he still manages the All-Star team, and there is precedent for a retired one coming back to do it: Tony La Russa left the Cardinals after winning the 2011 World Series and managed the National League the following July.
What the manager controls today is narrow and visible. He names the starting pitcher. He writes the batting order for the nine fan-elected starters. And he decides who comes in when, a job that involves a good deal of quiet negotiation, because 30 front offices have opinions about how many pitches their best arm should throw in an exhibition. His own club is often well represented on the field, but since 2017 that has been the voters' doing and not his.
The choice of starting pitcher is the one decision that still generates a real debate. It is by custom the pitcher with the best first half who is also rested, and the second condition matters as much as the first. A man who threw 105 pitches two days earlier cannot start, however good his numbers.
Replacements: why far more than 64 men are All-Stars each summer
Sixty-four players are named when the rosters are announced. By the time the anthem is sung the list is always longer. In a typical year it runs into the 70s and it has passed 80.
Three things cause it.
Injuries. A player elected or selected who is hurt, or simply on his club's injured list, is replaced. The categories of that list are explained in our guide to the 10-day, 15-day and 60-day IL. When a fan-elected starter cannot play, the reserve at his position ordinarily moves into the lineup and a new reserve is added behind him.
Sunday starters. The All-Star Game is played on a Tuesday. A starting pitcher who takes his regular turn on the Sunday before it would be working on one day of rest, which no club will permit, so for years the rule has been that such a pitcher is replaced on the active All-Star roster, or at most restricted to a token appearance. The precise wording has been adjusted across labor agreements. The effect is constant: several of the best starters in each league are announced, honored and unavailable.
Withdrawals. Some players, usually veterans with minor ailments, ask to be excused and take the four days off. Their places are filled too.
The league office names every replacement, generally working down the results of the player ballot. And here is the detail that inflates the count: a player who is replaced remains an All-Star. He was selected. It goes on his record and his plaque, it triggers the bonus in his contract, and he is introduced with the team if he attends. The man who takes his place is an All-Star as well, though he is announced with a good deal less ceremony, often in a line of a league press release a few days before the game.
So the honor is a little cheaper than the number 64 suggests. A player counting his selections at the end of a career may include one or two summers in which he was the third replacement at his position, and nobody keeps separate books for that.
How the game itself is played: the DH, the substitutions and the swing-off
Nine innings under the Official Baseball Rules, with a few customs laid on top that would look strange in any other game.
The designated hitter is used whatever the venue. That has been so since a rule change in 2010, before the National League had the DH in its own games, and it is now simply the rule everywhere, as set out in our explainer on the designated hitter rule.
Almost everyone plays. The starters bat twice, perhaps three times, and are replaced around the fifth inning, and pitchers work an inning each. A starting pitcher going three innings, once normal, is now a rarity. Managers treat getting every player into the game as an obligation second only to not getting anyone hurt, which leads to some odd endings: the ninth inning of a one-run All-Star Game is routinely contested by the 30th and 31st men on each roster. Special substitution rules give a manager some room to bring a player back if an injury leaves him short at a position.
Rules on trial have appeared here too. The ball-strike challenge system was used in the 2025 game, the season before it reached the regular season, and how it works is covered in our piece on the automated ball-strike system.
The home-run swing-off
A tied All-Star Game does not go to extra innings. Under the labor agreement reached in 2022, a game level after nine is settled by a miniature home run derby, and for three years the rule sat unused.
It was needed on July 15, 2025, at Truist Park in Atlanta. The National League had led 6-0. The American League scored six unanswered runs, the last two in the ninth, and the game finished 6-6. Each manager then sent up three hitters he had lined up beforehand from among the players still at the park, and each hitter got three swings against a coach throwing batting practice.
| Hitter | League | Home runs in three swings |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Rooker | American | 2 |
| Kyle Stowers | National | 1 |
| Randy Arozarena | American | 1 |
| Kyle Schwarber | National | 3 |
| Jonathan Aranda | American | 0 |
Schwarber, who had gone hitless in the game itself, homered on all three of his swings to put the National League ahead 4-3. When Aranda failed to clear the wall, it was over, and the NL's third hitter, Pete Alonso, never had to pick up a bat. Schwarber was named Most Valuable Player for three swings taken after the ninth inning.
Purists disliked it. The players on the field, by all appearances, did not, and the alternative is worth remembering: an exhibition running into a 12th inning with both bullpens empty. The rules of the stand-alone contest held the night before are in our guide to the Home Run Derby format and timer.
What the All-Star Game counts for
Nothing in the standings, and it has never counted there. Statistics from the game are kept in their own ledger and are not added to a player's season.
For 14 years it did carry one consequence. After the 2002 game ended in a tie, MLB and the players' union agreed that the league winning the All-Star Game would have home-field advantage in that year's World Series. The slogan was "This Time It Counts." It ran from 2003 through 2016.
- American League11wins
- National League3wins
The 14 games in which the winning league earned home-field advantage in the World Series. The arrangement ended with the 2017 labor agreement.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| American League | 11wins |
| National League | 3wins |
The idea never sat comfortably. It asked players from last-place clubs, some of them used for a single at-bat, to decide where Game 7 of the World Series would be played, in a contest managed as an exhibition. The American League won 11 of the 14, which meant AL pennant winners opened at home year after year for reasons unconnected to their own records.
Before 2003, home field had simply alternated between the leagues from one year to the next, which was arbitrary in a different way. Since 2017 it has gone to the World Series team with the better regular-season record, the same principle used in the earlier rounds laid out in our explainer on the MLB playoff bracket. The list of clubs that have won the Series, with and without that advantage, is in our table of World Series titles by franchise.
What it is worth to a player
Money, in two ways. The Basic Agreement provides a payment to the players on the winning side, which is the main reason the ninth inning is still played hard. And individual contracts very often carry an award clause that pays a bonus for an All-Star selection, sometimes with a larger amount for being elected to start. The sums are private to each deal.
The longer-lasting value is to a reputation. The number of All-Star selections follows a player's name for the rest of his life and is among the first figures quoted when his candidacy for Cooperstown is discussed, a process described in our guide to Hall of Fame voting and the 75 percent rule. Given how those selections are made, that deserves more caution than it gets.
All-Star week: the break, the host city and the events around the game
The game sits in the middle of a four-day pause in the regular season, in the second or third week of July, a little past the halfway point of the 162-game schedule. Regular-season play generally stops from the Monday through the Thursday.
The host changes every year. The Commissioner awards the game several seasons ahead, and the old practice of alternating strictly between American League and National League parks has given way to choosing cities for their own reasons: a new ballpark, an anniversary, a long wait. Philadelphia was given the 2026 game to coincide with the nation's 250th birthday.
Around the game itself the league has built a festival.
| Event | Since | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Home Run Derby | 1985 | A timed home-run contest, held the night before the game |
| Futures Game | 1999 | A seven-inning showcase for the best minor-league prospects |
| MLB Draft | Moved to All-Star week in 2021 | The amateur draft, 20 rounds, formerly held in June |
| All-Star Game | 1933 | The American League against the National League |
The Derby is the week's other main draw. The Futures Game, which began as a United States team against a World team and now sets American League prospects against National League ones, is the best single look most fans get at players a year or two from the majors. Moving the draft into the same week in 2021 gave it a stage it never had in June, though it also means the amateur game's biggest day competes with everything else on the bill. How the draft itself is run is explained in our piece on the MLB draft, from the lottery to the bonus pool.
For players not selected, the break is the only sustained rest of the season. That is a consideration for those who are selected too, and it explains a share of the withdrawals.
When the ballot was stuffed: Cincinnati in 1957 and Kansas City in 2015
The fan vote has been taken away once, and it was Cincinnati's doing.
In 1957, ballots were printed in newspapers, and a Cincinnati paper made it easy by printing them already filled in. When the count came in, Reds had been elected at seven of the eight National League positions: catcher Ed Bailey, second baseman Johnny Temple, shortstop Roy McMillan, third baseman Don Hoak, and outfielders Frank Robinson, Gus Bell and Wally Post. The lone exception was first base, where Stan Musial held on. By most accounts more than half of all the ballots cast had come from Cincinnati.
Commissioner Ford Frick stepped in. He removed Bell and Post from the starting lineup and installed Willie Mays and Hank Aaron in their places, which no one could argue with on baseball grounds. Then he took the vote away from the public altogether.
| Years | Who chose the starters |
|---|---|
| 1933 and 1934 | Fans, through newspaper ballots, together with the managers |
| 1935 to 1946 | Managers |
| 1947 to 1957 | Fans |
| 1958 to 1969 | Players, managers and coaches |
| 1970 to 2018 | Fans, on a single ballot |
| 2019 onward | Fans, in two phases |
For 12 seasons the starters were picked by the people in uniform, who were barred from voting for their own teammates. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn gave the vote back to fans in 1970, with computer punch cards distributed at ballparks and stores, and it has stayed with them since.
Kansas City's campaign 58 years later used the internet where Cincinnati had used newsprint, but it was the same phenomenon: a city in love with a winning team and a ballot with no residency requirement. At the peak, in mid-June 2015, Royals led at eight positions. The league canceled more than 60 million votes that failed its checks. The final count elected catcher Salvador Perez, shortstop Alcides Escobar and outfielders Lorenzo Cain and Alex Gordon.
Here the two episodes part. Cincinnati's 1957 team was a decent club whose voters elected several ordinary players. The 2015 Royals had won the pennant the previous October and would win the World Series that fall, and most of their elected starters had a case. The outrage that June was real, and much of it was about Infante. He lost his lead in the final days.
Records worth knowing
Hank Aaron was selected 25 times, the most in the game's history. The number needs a footnote, because he was an All-Star in 21 seasons: four of his selections come from the years when two games were played each summer. Willie Mays and Stan Musial, with 24 apiece, benefit from the same arithmetic.
The Most Valuable Player award dates from 1962 and was originally named for Arch Ward, the game's founder. Since 2002 it has carried the name of Ted Williams, who had died days before that year's game and who had supplied one of its great moments himself: a three-run home run with two out in the ninth inning in Detroit in 1941, to win it for the American League.
That 2002 game, in Milwaukee, is remembered for a different reason. After 11 innings the score was 7-7 and both managers had used every pitcher they had. Commissioner Bud Selig, in his own home city, conferred with them and declared a tie. The crowd booed, no MVP was named in the first year of the Ted Williams award, and the home-field experiment described above was the direct result. It was the second tie in the game's history. The first, in 1961 at Fenway Park, had been stopped by rain at 1-1.
A few other entries worth carrying around:
- Carl Hubbell struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in succession in 1934. All five are in the Hall of Fame.
- The National League won 19 of the 20 games played from 1963 through 1982. The American League then went unbeaten from 1997 through 2009.
- Fred Lynn hit the game's first grand slam in 1983, in its 50th anniversary year.
- Ichiro Suzuki's inside-the-park home run in San Francisco in 2007 was the first in an All-Star Game.
- Mike Trout was named MVP in both 2014 and 2015, the first player to win it in consecutive years.
- Shohei Ohtani was chosen in 2021 as both a pitcher and a designated hitter, and started the game in both roles.
Where it began: Arch Ward's Game of the Century in 1933
The first All-Star Game was meant to be the only one. Chicago was holding a world's fair in 1933, the Century of Progress Exposition, and the city wanted a sporting event to go with it. Arch Ward, sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, proposed a game between the best players of the American and National Leagues, with the lineups chosen by newspaper readers across the country and the proceeds going to a charity for retired ballplayers. Owners were lukewarm. In the worst year of the Depression, with attendance down everywhere, they agreed to try it once.
It was played on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park, before more than 47,000 people. Connie Mack managed the American League. John McGraw, who had retired from the Giants the year before, came back to manage the National. And Babe Ruth, 38 years old and near the end, hit a two-run home run in the third inning off Bill Hallahan of the Cardinals, the first homer in the game's history. The American League won 4-2. Nobody suggested stopping after that.
Two months later, in the same ballpark, the Negro Leagues staged their own all-star contest, the East-West Game, which in some years outdrew the white major leagues' version and became the biggest annual event in Black baseball. Its story belongs to our history of the Negro Leagues.
The summers with two games
From 1959 through 1962 there were two All-Star Games a year, a few weeks apart in different cities. The motive was money for the players' pension fund, which received a share of the gate and broadcast revenue, and the players themselves had pushed for it. The effect was the one critics predicted. Two games felt like half as much of an occasion, the second usually drew less interest than the first, and after four summers the experiment was dropped.
The game has been called off twice. In 1945 wartime travel restrictions made it impossible, and in 2020 the season did not begin until late July. Otherwise it has been played every summer since Ruth's home run, which makes it older than night baseball in the majors and older than the Hall of Fame. More of the sport's history and rules are collected on our baseball hub.