Yankees’ Aaron Judge, Phillies’ Bryce Harper earn automatic All-Star starts

NEW YORK — Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge and Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper have earned automatic starts in next month’s All-Star Game after leading their respective leagues during the first phase of voting.

Judge led all big leaguers with 3,425,309 total votes and paced the majors in voting for a second time. He also did so during his historic MVP campaign in 2022.

Harper had 3,277,920 votes.

Now a six-time All-Star, Judge entered Thursday’s game against the Blue Jays with the MLB lead in home runs (30), RBIs (77), slugging percentage (.710) and OPS (1.142). He’s also hitting .308.

“Kind of running out of adjectives and superlatives and what have you,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after Judge hit his 30th homer on Wednesday. “It’s amazing what he’s doing.”

The Rangers are hosting the 20224 Midsummer Classic. The exhibition will take place on July 15.

The second phase of All-Star voting, which begins on Sunday, June 30 at 12:00 p.m., features the top two vote-getters at each position, except for the outfield. In the National League, the top six outfielders are finalists. In the American League, it’s the next four outfielders after Judge.

The Yankees’ Juan Soto is one of the outfield finalists after finishing the first phase of voting with 3,000,121 votes. That ranked second among all AL players.

No other Yankees were finalists.