Renteria Regains Lead, Pujols Closes Gap In All-Star Voting
STLtoday.com Sports
07/01/2003
Edgar Renteria regained a healthy lead at shortstop and Albert Pujols cut the gap between himself and a starting position from 80,000 votes to 18,000 in fan balloting for the National League All-Star starters.
Online voting continues on MLB.com until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Online voters can cast up to 25 ballots.
Renteria led Atlanta's Rafael Furcal by 41,000 votes three weeks ago, then suddenly found himself 42,000 votes behind last week. But in the updated totals released this morning, Renteria was almost 43,000 votes ahead.
Cardinals teammate Scott Rolen is a lock at third base with 1.076 million votes -- second overall to Giants outfielder Barry Bonds (1.15 million) and more than double the next third baseman in the voting.
But Pujols, who leads the major leagues with a .386 batting average and tops the National League in most offensive categories, still is fourth among outfielders. He trails Bonds by 364,000 votes, Chicago's Sammy Sosa by 100,000 and Atlanta's Gary Sheffield by 18,000.
Here are the key stats for the top four outfielders in the fan balloting:
Bonds: .302 average, 22 homers, 47 RBIs, .488 on-base pct., .649 slugging pct.
Sosa: .298, 10 HRs, 36 RBIs, .413 OBP, .512 slugging
Sheffield: .323, 22 HRs, 64 RBIs, .411 OBP, .621 slugging
Pujols: .386, 23 HRs, 72 RBIs, .446 OBP, .710 slugging
Cards center fielder Jim Edmonds moved up to sixth in the outfield balloting with about 544,000 votes.
The All-Star Game is July 15 at Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field.
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