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Marcus Semien only Texas Ranger moving on in All-Star Game voting

Semien will be up against Houston’s Jose Altuve in Phase 2 of the All-Star Game voting to be the AL’s second baseman.

The field will not be full of Rangers this time.

Second baseman Marcus Semien is the only player moving on to the second round of All-Star Game voting, MLB announced Thursday. Semien, last year’s starter at second, finished second to Houston’s Jose Altuve in the first-round of voting, which concluded Thursday. The top two vote getters at each position move on to Phase 2. Semien finished nearly 500,000 votes behind Altuve in the primary, but vote totals revert to zero in Phase 2, which can’t hurt Semien’s chances and may help. Altuve still battles a mostly negative public reputation around the majors for his alleged involvement in Houston’s 2017 cheating scandal.

The second phase of voting runs online at MLB.com from Sunday until 11 am CT on Wednesday.

It’s a far cry from last year when the Rangers ended up with five starters for the game in Seattle. When Nathan Eovaldi entered the game to pitch, the Rangers had six representatives on the field simultaneously.

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Corey Seager, who finished a distant third behind Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson and Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. at shortstop, was the only other Ranger to finish in the top three.

It leaves the fate of Rangers’ third baseman Josh Smith up to his peers. Smith, who began Thursday with an .851 OPS, finished sixth in the fan voting with 500,934 votes. If Smith is not among the top two vote-getters in the player voting, he’d only have a shot to make the team if one of the other third basemen bowed out.

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The only other Ranger with a chance is reliever Kirby Yates, who began Thursday with 11 saves, a 0.99 ERA and 0.953 WHIP in 28.1 innings. The players select three relievers to go with five starting pitchers. Yates, Cleveland’s Emmanuel Clase, Oakland’s Mason Miller and New York’s Clay Holmes have been among the most effective closers in the AL this season.

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