2025 National League All-Star Team: The Final Ballot

As we conclude Major League Baseball’s regular season, it’s time to start handing out some hardware. An area where I think MLB has really missed the boat, is in not having an official All-Star team selected after the season is over. Baseball is the only sport where the All-Star team recorded by history is chosen at midseason. So, we’ll do what we can to rectify that in this space.

SETTING THE GROUND RULES

A few housekeeping notes:

*At least one outfielder must be a centerfielder—this has to be a team that could realistically take the field.
*We choose two setup relievers, in addition to a closer
*We choose a full rotation of five starters.

After the team is selected, we’ll use that as the foundation for picking the top 5 in the MVP race and the top 3 for the Cy Young.

Today’s focus will be on the National League. Please note all stats are going into Saturday’s games:

EVERYDAY LINEUP

C: William Contreras (Milwaukee)
Contreras didn’t have his best season this year, with the power numbers down—a .399 slugging percentage and 17 home runs. As a result, his selection may raise an eyebrow when you have people like Colorado’s Hunter Goodman hitting 30 bombs. But Contreras has a solid .355 on-base percentage, he’s logged more work than any other catcher and—perhaps most important—he was playing in meaningful games from start to finish.

1B: Pete Alonso (NY Mets)
There’s a lot of good candidates for this spot in the National League and Alonso’s Mets need a little help to even make the playoffs. But you can’t ignore the numbers—37 home runs and 124 RBIs. The batting average is a respectable .271 and the OBP a steady .346. Just as important, Alonso did this in Citi Field, where it’s not easy to post big power numbers. He’s the pick over Bryce Harper and Freddie Freeman.

2B: Ketel Marte (Arizona)
This one’s not close. We can give a hat-tip to Brice Turang in Milwaukee, but he plays in the wrong league to make an All-Star team. Marte is by far the best second baseman in the sport. He’s got a stat line of .376 OBP/.512 slugging percentage and has hit 27 homers.

3B: Manny Machado (San Diego)
Machado has a stat line of .333/.454. He’s hit 26 homers and driven in 93 runs It’s not a dominant year for a corner infield spot, but it’s pretty good. Matt Champan in San Francisco has a case, with a .341 OBP and 21 homers. Chapman is slugging .431. It’s close, but it’s also clear—Machado had the best season of any National League third baseman.

SS: Gerardo Perdomo (Arizona)
The second Diamondback middle infielder to get chosen was a harder call. The Phils’ Trea Turner and New York’s Francisco Lindor each have a case. Perdomo’s numbers are a stat line of .391/.461, a .291 batting average, 19 homers and 27 steals. Turner is a .300 hitter and stole 36 bags, but he’s much farther behind in OBP, at .356. Lindor has hit 31 homers in the aforementioned tough hitters’ park, but his OBP is .343. The ability to get on base is too foundational to an offense to ignore and so is Perdomo’s edge on his rivals.

OF: Juan Soto (NY Mets)
Soto is the easiest outfield pick, with 43 homers and 105 RBIs. While his batting average is a pedestrian .266, his patience at the plate creates an OBP of a dazzling .396.

OF: Corbin Carroll (Arizona)
Yes, I know, for a team that won’t make the playoffs, the Diamondbacks are getting a lot of attention in this space. It’s a reflection of the fact they didn’t have any pitching. The play of the offensive stars is what kept Arizona alive to the final Friday of the season. Carroll has 31 homers and 32 stolen bases.

OF: Andy Pages (LA Dodgers)
This is where the requirement that one outfielder play center impacts selection, thereby removing Washington’s James Woods or Cubbie rightfielder Kyle Tucker from consideration. Pages hit 27 homers and slugged .466 for a contending team in a pitcher’s park. His .315 OBP is low, but a true All-Star team needs to be chosen by position.

DH: Shohei Ohtani (LA Dodgers)
The greatest player of all-time has an OBP of .390, a slugging percentage of .616, has hit 54 homers and stolen 20 bases. Shohei leaves a worthy challenger like Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber (56 homers, 132 ribbies) in the dust.

STARTING PITCHERS

Paul Skenes (Pittsburgh)
The ineptitude of the Pirate offense has limited Skenes to a 10-10 record, but he has a 1.97 ERA and his 187 innings pitched is fourth among National League starters.

Cristopher Sanchez (Philadelphia)
Sanchez has been a workhorse, with 196 innings pitched. He’s also won 13 games, posted a 2.57 ERA for a solid Phillie rotation that has its eye on a World Series.

Freddy Peralta (Milwaukee)
Peralta has a dazzling 17-6 won-loss record and a 2.68 ERA. His Cy Young case may be limited by 174 innings pitched, but that’s still more than enough to make him an easy call for an All-Star team.

Logan Webb (San Francisco)
While Webb’s 3.30 ERA is higher than I’d like to see for an All-Star, this is also an era of baseball where innings pitched by the rotation are increasingly valuable. Webb is a horse’s horse, as consistent as there is at taking his turn and logging innings. This year was no different, with 201 IP. And he’s got 14 wins.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto (LA Dodgers)
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Webb is Yamamoto, whose 173 IP is a little low. But with a 2.49 ERA, he’s still well ahead of every other contender left.

BULLPEN

Setup: Abner Uribe (Milwaukee)
Uribe has easily been the best setup reliever in the National League. He’s worked 74 innings, a good number for this role and his 1.70 ERA is the best among contenders.

Setup: Tyler Rogers (NY Mets)
Rogers is sitting on a 1.89 ERA in 76 innings. It’s a close race with Jason Adams in San Diego, who is at a 1.93 ERA, but has eleven fewer innings pitched and 14 fewer appearances than Rogers. That’s a lot.

Closer: Robert Suarez (San Diego)
The injury to Milwaukee’s Trevor Megill in late August left the door wide open for Suarez. The Padre closer nailed down 40 saves in 45 opportunities. His 3.01 ERA is higher than I would like to see, but he’s just too far ahead of Megill (30/36 on saves) and Met closer Edwin Diaz (28/31, with a 1.71 ERA) on the core job responsibility—closing games—to ignore.

AWARDS

Cy Young Award: Paul Skenes (Pittsburgh)
Skenes is the overwhelming favorite to win the award and will be the Pirates’ first Cy Young winner since Doug Drabek did it back in 1990. He deserves it. This is not a bandwagon I jumped on quickly, as Skenes’ innings pitched lagged for the early part of the season. But he’s working deeper and his ERA is exceptional. While I’m enough of a traditionalist to still value wins, I’m also just enough of a modern stat guy to appreciate that stat’s limitations.

Thus, my Cy Young ballot would be:

1)Skenes
2)Sanchez
3)Peralta

This was actually a pretty easy ballot on each level. I don’t think there’s much doubt as to who the trio is, or even what order they should be in.

Most Valuable Player: Shohei Ohtani (LA Dodgers)
Ohtani is an extraordinary player to watch, but he really takes the fun out of the MVP voting. He got back to pitching this year and worked 47 innings with a 2.87 ERA. He’s a lock to win the award and to pick anyone else would be doing it to be contrarian just for its own sake.

My final ballot would look like this:

1)Ohtani
2)Marte
3)Soto
4)Schwarber
5)Alonso

The race for #2 is interesting. The value of production at a position like second base leads me to give the edge to Marte, but I think you could take Marte, Soto, and Schwarber and make a good case for virtually any order. After Alonso, is when I’d start dipping into the pitchers and putting Skenes on the ballot.

WHY THIS TEAM MATTERS

When you spend as much time going through past seasons as we do here at OUAT Sports, you really appreciate All-Star teams—it’s quick snapshot look at who mattered the most over the course of the long six months. MLB”s failure to have this season-ending selection is a big omission in the historical record book. We’ll do our best to rectify it, and that will continue with an American League team at some point between now and Monday.