Major League Baseball released its latest All-Star fan vote totals Monday, and buried inside the numbers is something that makes zero sense on paper — but makes perfect sense if you understand how global fan bases work.
Hyeseong Kim, a 27-year-old infielder who hasn’t played in the majors since late May, is sitting fourth among National League second basemen. He got 659,500 votes. That puts him ahead of Luis Arraez and Ketel Marte, two guys who are actually, you know, in the big leagues right now.
Kim is playing for the Oklahoma City Comets. Triple-A. He got optioned there on May 29 after appearing in 38 games for the Dodgers this season. The latest vote count came out nearly a month after that demotion.
The gap between reality and the ballot
The three second basemen ahead of Kim are Ozzie Albies, Bryson Stott and Brice Turang. All are everyday starters. None of them have a 27-game head start on Chipotle bowls in a minor league clubhouse.
Kim landed with the Dodgers this winter after a decorated run with the Kiwoom Heroes of the KBO. He was a star in South Korea, and that popularity didn’t evaporate when he started hitting .224 with a .547 OPS in Los Angeles. His fan base is real. It’s loud. And it’s perfectly willing to stuff a ballot box from 6,000 miles away.
The Dodgers have one of the largest global followings in baseball, too. Put those two things together and you get a Triple-A player pulling in more votes than a two-time batting champion.
How we got here
Bob Nightengale of USA Today posted the ballot returns on social media, and the NL second base list immediately drew attention. Not because of who was on it, but because of who was behind Kim on it. Arraez and Marte are both top-end hitters. Marte finished top-five in MVP voting two years ago. But fan voting doesn’t check recent performance. It checks name recognition, team affiliation and how many people with internet access want to push a button.
There’s no mechanism in the current voting system to filter out players who aren’t on active rosters. The ballot includes every player who appeared in a game this season. Kim did. So he’s eligible. And his people showed up.
What happens next
It’s not clear whether Kim will advance deeper into the voting process. Phase 2 narrows the field at each position, and the final selections will involve a combination of fan votes and player input. But for now, one of the strangest stories of the 2026 All-Star cycle involves a guy who last played a major league game more than a month ago.
The Dodgers haven’t commented on his vote total. Kim hasn’t said anything either. Then again, he’s busy hitting in a league where the mascot is a giant blue and orange comet.
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