As announced during a special Final Vote-edition of MLB Now on MLB Network and MLB.com, Michael Saunders of the Toronto Blue Jays and Brandon Belt of the San Francisco Giants were chosen by fans as the winners of the 2016 Esurance MLB All-Star Game Final Vote. Saunders and Belt earned the final two AL and NL All-Star Team roster spots through online voting on MLB.com, the individual Club sites and Twitter, where custom player hashtags counted during the final six hours of voting today.
On the NL ballot, Belt withstood a whirlwind three-day race that saw him go from last to first on day one, lose the lead to Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Starling Marte on day two and recapture and hold the lead through the final day of voting. Marte finished second, just behind Belt and ahead of Trevor Story (Colorado), Jake Lamb (Arizona) and Ryan Braun (Milwaukee). Belt garnered 10.4 million votes and is the first Giants player to win the MLB All-Star Game Final Vote.
The AL winner, Saunders tallied 17.7 million votes and held off Houston's George Springer, who led all 10 players in votes from the mobile text ballot, in becoming the second Blue Jays player (Steve Delabar, 2013) to win the MLB All-Star Game Final Vote. Saunders and Springer were followed by Dustin Pedroia (Boston), Ian Kinsler (Detroit) and Evan Longoria (Tampa Bay).
This year's Esurance MLB All-Star Game Final Vote concluded with a dramatic final few minutes, which saw the Twitter voting drawing thousands of tweets per minute. Overall, the top two leading Twitter vote-getters were in the American League, #VoteCaptainCanada and #VoteSpringer, and they were followed by #VoteBelt, #VoteKinsler and #VOTEMARTE in the top five.
For the final regional analysis of the 2016 Esurance MLB All-Star Game Final Vote, go to MLB.com's data visualization map. Click here to access the interactive map.