Mariners fans need to rally to J.P. Crawford's All-Star cause amid voting shortage

All-Star voting can be a touchy subject for MLB fans and players alike. Unless your name is Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani, it's difficult to stand out amongst other elite athletes, especially when a total of just two starters will be named for each position.

Shortstop has been an especially competitive spot to earn in recent years, with even top-notch players like Francisco Lindor struggling to earn the nod consistently. Naturally, this makes it even more difficult for Seattle's own J.P. Crawford to get the respect he so rightfully deserves.

J.P. Crawford deserves better in the All-Star voting for AL shortstops

In a recent report of the current vote tallies, Crawford has fallen far behind the rest of the American League pack, not even appearing in the top five most popular players. Based on the numbers, Jacob Wilson and Bobby Witt Jr. are comfortably ahead of the others by nearly 200,000 votes.

However, these voting results don't necessarily reflect what has been done on the field. In fact, here's how Wilson, Witt, and Crawford stack up against each other statistically:

As you can see, all three players have been outstanding at the plate this year, but differ in their fielding abilities. Witt is one of the best infielders in baseball no matter what defensive metric you use, while Wilson and Crawford have been below average. However, Crawford is far closer to average than Wilson is and for a position with such lofty defensive expectations, that should play a major factor and explains the difference in rWAR between them.

Furthermore, if you unpack offensive production you get to see that Crawford does some things incredibly well. He's still at a 16.8 walk percentage and has the second-highest on-base percentage in the American League behind Judge. He trails only Jeremy Peña and Witt in rWAR among shortstops.

So while Crawford may not be the definitive starter, he definitely deserves more love than Bo Bichette (1.2 rWAR) and Anthony Volpe (1.5 rWAR), who have both received more votes than him.

All-Star voting has been tough for the Mariners. Seattle doesn't quite have the market support that other teams like the Dodgers or Yankees have, and Crawford isn't the only player on the team to be getting the short end of the stick in this whole situation.

If anything, the structure of the fan vote gives supporters of a given team a chance to show their favorite players some much-needed love. They have until 12:00PM ET on June 26th to vote and can submit up to five teams per day.

Not all hope is lost, however. While the starters of the All-Star game will be determined through the two phases of the fan voting system, the reserves for the team will be chosen by player ballots and the Commissioner's Office, which could still give Crawford a chance to earn his first ever trip to the All-Star game.

So far, the only Mariner with a very good chance of getting selected is Cal Raleigh and given his numbers this season, there should be no surprises there. But with some help from the fans and a continuation of the momentum he has built up over the past month, J.P. Crawford could be right there with him.