Former Guardian continues to become household name with incredible All-Star honor 

Every year the MLB All-Star voting tends to give us some surprises. Sometimes that surprise comes from the players included since every year has some unheralded player who goes on a first-half‘Linsanity” run that helped them become an All-Star (see David Fry in 2024). 

But sometimes players earn All-Star honors thanks to fan voting, which helps push the finalists at each position into Round 2 of the voting. That is, unless you get the most votes in either league, which gives those players an automatic bid to the All-Star game. 

Shohei Ohtani earned the most votes in the National League (to the surprise of no one). But the American League’s top vote-getter was a huge surprise, as Toronto Blue Jays second baseman (and former Guardians prospect) Ernie Clement earned 3,232,932 votes.

While Blue Jays fans are on another level when it comes to fan voting, Clement’s in the midst of another strong season. He entered the weekend with a .294/.315/.438 slashline with seven home runs, 28 RBI and an American League-leading 20 doubles. 

Ernie Clement has shined since joining the Blue Jays

Even though his defense hasn’t been as good as it was last season (-4 Outs Above Average), he still has great plate discipline and strikeout rate.  

Not only is Clement becoming an All-Star in itself is an incredible feat given the lowkey beginning to his career, but it’s even more impressive considering he earned the most votes in the American League. 

Clement came up in the Guardians’ system and ended up playing in 40 games at the end of the 2021 season as Cleveland played out the string on a lost season. 

He bounced back-and-forth between Triple-A and the bigs in 2022, but hit .200 in 63 games before being cut that September. 

He had a short cameo with the Athletics at the end of that season before ending up in Toronto, which has been the perfect pairing. 

Clement’s played in 403 regular season games with the Blue Jays and has recorded a .280/.307/.414 slashline, though the highlight of his career came last postseason when he hit .411 while recording a 30 hits, which is a new postseason record. 

“Belief in myself, staying true to who I am and just never giving up,” Clement said, per MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson. “I got DFA’d twice, I’ve been released, I’ve been optioned more times than I can count. I stuck around long enough to earn more and more opportunities.”

But Clement’s not the only Blue Jay who has benefited from Toronto’s love of baseball. In total, seven Blue Jays position players advanced to Phase 2 of the voting, one of whom is old friend Andrés Giménez.

Clement’s departure from Cleveland may not generate the same level of anger as Junior Caminero’s, he’s starting to turn into a bonafide star in Toronto. This year’s Midsummer Classic will be another example of that.

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