Braves slugger Matt Kemp is moving up in the National League All-Star fan voting and has at least an outside chance at being voted a starter for the July 11 All-Star game in Miami.
Kemp had the fifth-most votes (457, 586) among NL outfielders in the second fan-vote update released Monday, and was fewer than 40,000 behind the third-place vote-getter in the group, Cubs (and former Braves) right fielder Jason Heyward (498,079). The top three outfielders in fan balloting will be NL All-Star starters, barring injury.
Kemp is a two-time former All-Star, having made the team in back-to-back seasons with the Dodgers in 2011-2012. He’s currently ranked fifth in the NL in batting average (.335) and eighth in slugging percentage (.580), just ahead of the Nationals’ Daniel Murphy (.573) and the Reds’ Joey Votto (.571). Kemp’s .938 OPS ranks 13th in the league.
The top two NL outfielders had a commanding lead in fan voting Tuesday with the Nationals’ Bryce Harper leading all NL vote-getters overall with 1,459,235, followed among outfielders by the Rockies’ Charlie Blackmon (979,961).
Two other Braves were among the five leading vote-getters at their positions: injured Freddie Freeman was third among NL first basemen with 401,982 votes, and Brandon Phillips was third among NL second basemen with 185,862 votes, far behind Murphy (1,149,130) and the Cubs’ Javier Baez (715,928).
