Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here.

The second 2025 PRO SPIRIT MLB All-Star Ballot update is out, and there are only three days left to vote in Phase 1, so get those ballots in.

Fans can go to MLB.com/vote to fill out a ballot until Phase 1 of the All-Star voting ends on Thursday at noon ET. For now, here are five takeaways from the latest ballot update.

1. Judge and Ohtani are both cruising to a fifth straight All-Star Game
The two biggest stars in baseball are the two leaders in All-Star balloting. Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are the top vote-getters in each league by a wide margin, which puts them in position to earn automatic starting spots on the two All-Star teams. Judge leads the American League (and MLB overall) with 2,699,483 votes, well ahead of AL runner-up Cal Raleigh. Ohtani leads the National League with 2,521,718 votes, well ahead of teammates Will Smith and Freddie Freeman, as well as the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong.

2. Vlad Jr. leapfrogs Goldschmidt
The big change from the first All-Star ballot update to the second is that Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has taken over the lead from the Yankees’ Paul Goldschmidt in the AL first base race. The Blue Jays slugger, who was voted in as the AL’s starter at first base last season and has won the fan vote in three of the last four years, now holds a narrow edge over Goldschmidt, who’s seeking his eighth career All-Star nod in his first season in the Bronx.

3. The closest races to advance to Phase 2 are …
In the American League, the position battles at second base and DH are coming down to the wire. The top two vote-getters at each position advance to Phase 2 of All-Star voting, and those second spots are tightly contested. The Tigers’ Gleyber Torres has a comfortable lead at the keystone, but there’s a fierce battle for the No. 2 spot between the Orioles’ Jackson Holliday (806,133 votes) and the Astros’ Jose Altuve (795,123). The same goes at DH behind Baltimore’s Ryan O’Hearn (937,205), who leads the Yankees’ Ben Rice (409,336) and the A’s Brent Rooker (396,290).

The races in the NL don’t have such slim margins, but it’s worth taking a second to appreciate how stacked the outfield race is. PCA, Teoscar Hernández, Kyle Tucker, Ronald Acuña Jr., Juan Soto and Corbin Carroll have squeezed out stars like the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. and the Nationals’ James Wood, who are among those on the outside looking in.

4. Javier Báez’s resurgence continues
Báez is in the middle of one of the best redemption arcs in baseball. His bounce-back season for the juggernaut Tigers now has him in position to make his first All-Star team since 2019, when he was a Cub. Báez is in third place in the AL outfield voting, behind only Judge and teammate Riley Greene.

5. Big Dumper’s crushing his way toward his first All-Star team
Raleigh is in the middle of one of the greatest seasons ever for a catcher, as he leads the Major Leagues with 31 home runs and is on pace for well over 60. He’s being rewarded in the All-Star voting, where he trails only Judge in the American League and is dominating the catcher race.

Want to know more about Raleigh’s historic year? Read on …

— David Adler

• Braves @ Mets (7:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): We meet again! A week ago, the Mets came into Atlanta on top of the NL East, but now they’re staring up at the Phillies. Boasting the Majors’ best home record by win percentage, the Mets play 10 of their next 13 games at Citi Field as they look to avenge last week’s sweep by the Braves.
• Cubs @ Cardinals (7:45 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): It’s this year’s first meeting between the two NL Central rivals, and they better get acquainted since they face off seven times over the next 14 days. With the Brewers sandwiched in between them in the standings, the Cardinals enter the four-game series only 4 1/2 games back of the Cubs for first, so buckle up everyone.

If you’ve been looking for a 2025 MLB Draft preview, this past week had you covered. Hundreds of top Draft-eligible prospects put their skills on display at the MLB Draft Combine in Arizona, looking to boost their stock ahead of the July 13 Draft. Then, this weekend in Omaha, Louisiana State toppled Coastal Carolina to secure its eighth national championship with a roster full of top Draft prospects.

The Tigers’ roster featured six players on MLB Pipeline’s list of the Top 200 Draft prospects, the most of any team in this year’s College World Series. And many played pivotal roles in locking down the program’s second title in three years and fourth this century. All told, LSU’s eight championships in program history are second all time, only to USC’s 12.

The biggest name to remember next month belongs to left-hander Kade Anderson, who threw a shutout in Game 1 to earn CWS Most Outstanding Player honors and cap an ascendant season. The sophomore-eligible southpaw has a good chance of being the first pitcher selected and remains a candidate to go No. 1 overall to the Nationals. That was all true before his CWS performance, with Anderson compiling 180 strikeouts and a 3.18 ERA in 119 innings this season. But his performance in NCAA tournament play certainly didn’t hurt. His dominant Game 1 performance was the first shutout by an LSU pitcher since 2018.

For the clincher, the Tigers turned to right-hander Anthony Eyanson (Draft prospect No. 66), who followed Anderson’s gem by striking out nine over 6 1/3 innings of three-run ball. The team turned to its next-highest-ranked prospect, righty Chase Shores (Draft prospect No. 85) to close things out, with Shores firing triple-digit fastballs to strike out four while securing the final eight outs. Both Eyanson and Shores may have pitched themselves up Draft boards with their CWS performances.

As if the Tigers weren’t stacked enough, their championship team also featured three position players who might hear their names called early on Draft Day: second baseman Daniel Dickinson (No. 72), first baseman Jared Jones (No. 99) and outfielder Ethan Frey (No. 130).

— Joe Trezza

Johnny Bench. Aaron Judge. Mickey Mantle. Ken Griffey Jr.

Those are the names that Cal Raleigh is conjuring up after going absolutely berserk over the weekend at Wrigley Field to continue what has already been an historic first half of the season.

Let’s start with Bench, who, along with Negro Leagues legend Josh Gibson, is often in the conversation as the greatest player ever to strap on the tools of ignorance. A 14-time All-Star with 10 Gold Gloves on his mantle, Bench peaked from 1970-72, when he twice led the Majors in homers and RBIs while taking home MVP Awards in ’70 and ’72.

In 1970, Bench set the record for most home runs by a catcher before the All-Star break with 28 in 87 games. On Friday, “The Big Dumper” tied and surpassed Bench with a two-homer day on the North Side – and he did it in 14 fewer games!

As MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer noted, it’s just one of several impressive all-time marks that are now on Raleigh’s radar.

With another home run on both Saturday and Sunday, Raleigh entered the week leading the Major Leagues with 31 — four more than Judge. In fact, the Seattle slugger is on pace to not only pass Salvador Perez’s record of 48 home runs by a primary catcher (set in 2021), but also Judge’s single-season AL mark of 62 homers set a year later.

It doesn’t end there. In addition to being arguably the best defensive player at any position in the AL, Raleigh also swings the lumber from both sides of the plate, and he’s currently on pace to smash Mantle’s 1961 record of 54 jacks by a switch-hitter.

Griffey Jr. set the Mariners’ single-season homer record with 56 in both 1997 and ’98. In ’98, 35 of those came before the All-Star break, giving Raleigh three full weeks to pass that mark, too.

— Ed Eagle

• You’ve heard of synchronized swimming. But synchronized run-scoring? The Phillies may have perfected it on Friday night in their blowout victory over the rival Mets, as Nick Castellanos and J.T. Realmuto each beat Luis Torrens’ tag exactly .31 seconds apart. “I think I was smiling the whole time,” Realmuto said. “… It’s one of those plays you never really prepare for, so it was fun to be a part of.”

Interestingly, this wasn’t the only time we can recall the Mets getting blitzed at the plate by rapid-fire baserunners. Suffice to say, though, it worked out a bit better for them in the 2006 NLDS.

• First, Elly De La Cruz hit a grand slam on his Bobblehead Night back in April. Then Shohei Ohtani followed suit with a pair of homers last month. Friday was Aaron Judge’s turn: He crushed his 27th homer to celebrate the giveaway of his Superman Bobblehead at Yankee Stadium. It’s probably just a coincidence – all those guys frequently do amazing things on any given night – but if Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto somehow goes deep on July 2, we’re going to start debating causation vs. correlation.

• Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski has absolutely insane stuff, as evidenced by 11 no-hit innings to start his career, a record for Modern Era starting pitchers. If you need visual evidence, watch this preposterous 95.5 mph slider collapse a batter like a house of cards.

• Rafael Devers’ first non-Red Sox homer … came against the Red Sox. The recently traded slugger connected off close friend Brayan Bello on Saturday to help the Giants take a 3-2 victory, en route to winning the weekend set.

Can you guess today’s mystery player using clues like age, league, division, position and place of birth? You’ll have nine tries to get it right. Good luck! Play here >>

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