Fan voting for the 2026 All-MLB Team closed Friday at 2 p.m. ET. The ballots are in, the panel of media members, broadcasters and former players has equal weight with the fan vote, and nobody finds out the result until the MLB Awards show in Las Vegas on Nov. 11.
So here is the one position where the right answer is already obvious and the voting probably got it wrong anyway.
The DH Ballot
Six names were nominated at designated hitter: Yordan Alvarez, Dominic Canzone, Yandy Diaz, Shohei Ohtani, Ben Rice and Kyle Schwarber. Alvarez should be the first-team pick by a margin that makes the rest of the group look like a different tier.
Alvarez hit .316/.432/.601 in 158 games with 42 home runs, 106 RBIs and 105 runs scored. His 190 OPS+ and 6.8 WAR were not just the best at the position, they were among the best figures in baseball at any position. A .432 on-base percentage paired with a .601 slugging mark is an everyday superstar season, and he gave Houston all of it.
Ohtani is the name that wins fan votes, and his 2026 was good rather than overwhelming: .275/.377/.512 with 30 home runs and 81 RBIs in 135 games, a 143 OPS+ and 3.2 WAR as a hitter. That is an excellent year. It is also 47 points of OPS+ and more than three wins behind Alvarez.
Schwarber hit 45 home runs, more than anyone else on the ballot, and drew 105 walks. He also hit .232, struck out 220 times, and finished with a 128 OPS+ and 2.6 WAR. Diaz batted .293 with 22 homers and a 124 OPS+ for the AL’s best team. Both are first-team arguments only if home run totals and reputation are doing the work.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds
All-MLB is the one honor that puts fans and professionals on the same scorecard, which makes it the clearest annual test of whether narrative beats production. At DH in 2026, production has a 190 OPS+ and a Houston uniform, and narrative has a reputation.
The counterargument for Ohtani is that he pitched. He did make starts in 2026, and his two-way value is real. The DH ballot is not the place to pay him for it: the All-MLB team has a separate starting pitcher category, with 29 nominees, and Ohtani was not among them.
What I Expect Instead
Ohtani gets the first team and Alvarez gets the second. That is how these votes usually go when the biggest name in the sport is on the ballot, and it would be a bad outcome rather than a scandal.
The Gold Glove finalists arrive Oct. 15 and the Silver Slugger finalists on Nov. 2, so there is plenty of awards season left to argue about. This one is already decided, sealed, and almost certainly wrong.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.