Phillies' Bryce Harper receives strange All-Star voting results

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Phillies' Bryce Harper receives strange All-Star voting results originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The Philadelphia Phillies have some high-quality candidates for the NL All-Stars this season, which happen to take place in Philadelphia.

Kyle Schwarber, Cristopher Sanchez, and very likely Jhoan Duran are locks for the All-Star team this season. Bryce Harper and Brandon Marsh are solid candidates, but their status is still a bit uncertain at the moment.

However, as USA Today's Bob Nightengale shared, the first wave of voting for the All-Star Game has come in, and for Harper, there are some strange results so far.

Bryce Harper receives strange All-Star voting results​

Harper received 651,792 votes so far, which places him third, and currently on the outside looking in for the NL All-Star team.

He's behind Freddie Freeman of the Los Angeles Dodgers at 870,606 votes and Matt Olson of the Atlanta Braves at 802,848 votes.

It's not a total surprise that Harper is third behind these two, considering Olson has been one of the best hitters in baseball this season, and Freeman has a massive advantage thanks to the massive Dodgers fan base when it comes to the fan vote.

Harper has been a bit better than Freeman this season, with Harper's .860 OPS a tab better than Freeman's .836 OPS. Olson has an .894 OPS for reference. But it's close enough that it's not too strange for Harper to be third in this group.

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What is strange about the All-Star voting results so far is that Bryson Stott and Alec Bohm both somehow, unlike Harper, were second-place in their respective positional categories for All-Star voting.

Despite both Stott and Bohm having OPS marks well below .700, they received the second-most votes at second base and third base, respectively.

Marsh placed third for NL outfielders, while Schwarber was second behind Shohei Ohtani for designated hitters. But, somehow, Harper is in a worse spot than Bohm and Stott for his All-Star position this year.

This obviously isn't the final voting results, and Harper still has a better chance to earn an All-Star bid this year than either Stott or Bohm. But it doesn't change the fact that this is a strange first result for Harper.

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