These MLB players are already bound to be All-Star snubs

Welcome to the first edition of the 2026 Rick Porcello and/or Kevin Kiermaier All-Stars, so named for two players I grew up watching who each somehow never made an All-Star team. This list will be refined throughout the next month and change to figure out who is worthy of taking their place next to Rick and Kevin, and it is a steep hill to climb — Porcello won the AL Cy Young in 2016 but didn’t make the All-Star team, and Kiermaier threw down nearly seven WAR in 2015 without making the Midsummer Classic. The goal is to find out the most worthy players who are nonetheless doomed to be All-Star snubs; both groups, Porcello for pitchers and Kiermaier for hitters, could have been named after any number of players, but I was baptized in the mid-2010s AL East.

Important to note: Lately, “All-Star Snubs” are really just players who definitely would have made the ASG had it not been for the stupid rule that every MLB team must be represented, leading to some loaded positions just not having room for second-or-third Red So—erm, players from the same team. We will revisit this list to crown a single champion just before the All-Star Game in July, but for now, here are the inaugural candidates for the award you never want to win: best player who didn’t make the All-Star game.

American League

1B Willson Contreras, Boston Red Sox

Contreras is a super-strong start for this list, as he’s getting double-dunked on by both his position and his team. Voters will likely not be in a hurry to venerate the 2026 Boston Red Sox, a team trying to decide if they are a total disaster or just simply below average, and Aroldis Chapman is pretty much a lock to be their one All-Star representative. Further messing with Contreras’ chances is that he plays first base, a brutally competitive position this year in the American League with Ben Rice, Nick Kurtz and Munetaka Murakami all raking. But he’s also 12th in the AL in WAR, has been a cheaper, better Alex Bregman replacement in the Red Sox lineup and is the only thing Boston has even approaching power hitting. Contreras should be an All-Star, but he probably won’t be.

RP Rico Garcia, Baltimore Orioles

Two guys in and we’re already deep in our bag. Here’s Rico Garcia, someone many of you outside the mean streets of the AL East may not even have heard of. Amid a rather disappointing Orioles season, Garcia has been shutting things down in regular closer Ryan Helsley’s injury absence and has been flat-out great all season. He’s just destroying hitters out of the bullpen, avoiding barrels and striking dudes out at a pretty-crazy rate.

There’s pretty much no scenario where he ends up an All-Star, because unless you’re the swaggiest closer imaginable, you’re pretty screwed as a reliever. Nevertheless, another bang-up job by the New York Mets when they DFA’d Garcia last year for obscure reasons.

OF Ceddanne Rafaela, Boston Red Sox

Okay, yes, there are two Red Sox on the list of three American League All-Star snubs (clicks on “Oliver Fox” profile … “tries to keep his Boston bias to a minimum” mhmm likely story pal) but hear me out! Rafaela is a prototypical All-Star snub; there are significantly less-impactful players than he that will make the All-Star game, but there simply isn’t enough public appreciation for his fielding prowess to get him in over all the admittedly far cooler outfielders who will make it.

Julio Rodriguez is the guy he is likely to be snubbed for, and while JRod captivates the popular imagination and hits for way more power, he’s not a good defensive center fielder at all and has been a worse hitter than Rafaela on balance this season because of his characteristically slow start. Meanwhile, Rafaela is the best defensive player in the American League not named Bobby Witt Jr. I rest my unbiased case. (Go Red Sox.)

National League

2B JJ Wetherholt, St. Louis Cardinals

The NL sneakily has an embarrassment of riches at second base, and I expect that Brice Turang, Xavier Edwards and Luis Arraez will probably prevent Wetherholt (and Ozzie Albies, by the way, who almost made the cut for this list) from making the All-Star Game. Wetherholt will have plenty of years to correct that, but he’s doing excellent work this season for a St. Louis Cardinals team that is still out here outperforming every expectation imaginable. He’s an incredible defensive second baseman, creates great contact and brings speed to the basepaths. I’m a fan of his, and I don’t see the All-Star game avoiding him for very long.

OF Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates

I could have easily titled this list “NL outfielders destined to be All-Star snubs”, because you could make a godly three-man unit out of these guys alone. One of Pete Crow-Armstrong and Ian Happ is missing this thing, and find me another member of the Colorado Rockies to put in other than Micky Moniak.

Corbin Carroll is a mortal lock, so all but one of PCA, Oneil Cruz, Jordan Walker, Michael Harris II and Brandon Marsh are probably on the outside looking in. Cruz is my snub pick here, though, because his always-enticing underlying metrics are turning into on-the-field metrics in 2026. He’s on pace to clear 30-30 like it’s nothing, and still probably will be nowhere near the ASG. It’s a cruel world we live in.

RP Raisel Iglesias, Atlanta Braves

Iglesias has been a solid-to-good-to-great closer for over a decade now, and I am not sure what bro has to do to finally make an All-Star Game before he retires. And while he has a really good case right now, I wonder if he will hold off the Cardinals' Riley O’Brien, whose save count has been climbing fast and who has pitched nine more innings than Iglesias has. The latter probably deserves to be an All-Star alongside Mason Miller and Jhoan Duran, but he also has to deal with the sheer depth of Atlanta Braves representation and avoid the procedural snub. There is a legitimate argument that Iglesias should already be a Rick Porcello All-Star, but if he misses it this year, it’ll be clinched.

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