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MLB All-Star Week Preview and Snubbed Players ⭐️🥇

We preview MLB All-Star Week and the players snubbed from an All-Star selection.

Author

Elijah Evans
July 09, 2025

Alright, get the yelling out now. Your favorite player didn’t make the All-Star Game and you want someone to be made at right now. We get it, but don’t forget that the All-Star Game means…nothing.

We’re heading into a huge week of baseball content as the first half of the season wraps up, the MLB Draft takes place, and Atlanta hosts the festivities of All-Star Week.

Switching up the normal order a little, we’ll preview the All-Star Week before we provide a final in-depth preview and mock of the 2025 MLB Draft later this week.

The Just Baseball crew will be live in Atlanta with tons of coverage on every event of the week. Make sure to stayed tuned with us on X and YouTube, where we’ll be hosting a live stream for the MLB Draft and much more.

2025 MLB All-Star Events

MLB All-Star Week is approaching as the events kick off on Saturday with a ton of excitement on the way. Here is the breakdown of all the events kicking off this weekend in Atlanta:

All-Star Game Roster

The full rosters for the All-Star Game were announced on Sunday after the fan-voted starting lineups came out the week prior.

The American League starting lineup is headlined by the duo battling for MVP to this point, Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh. Meanwhile, the pitching staff is led by Cy Young favorite Tarik Skubal and an array of first-time arms including Hunter Brown, Bryan Woo, and others.

Jacob deGrom returning to the All-Star Game is a sight of beauty for all baseball fans as well after years of injuries derailing his excellence.

The reserves for the American League is a fascinating group that led to plenty of anger…which we’ll get to later.

The National League starting lineup led by the one and only Shohei Ohtani features a ton of superstar names. Ronald Acuña Jr., despite not returning until May from injury rehab, earned the nod after looking incredible in his limited time.

Pitching is stacked this season with true aces throughout this NL pitching staff. Paul Skenes and Zack Wheeler start it off, as they’re likely the two in contention to start the game. Some first-time All-Star arms that really emerged this season include MacKenzie Gore and Matthew Boyd.

The group of reserves for the NL is loaded like the starters, but a couple names are notably missing from the list.

Home Run Derby

One of the best events of the baseball season takes place on Monday!

The full bracket for the derby is not out yet, but the initial five participants list is ELECTRIC:

  • Cal Raleigh (35 HR)

  • James Wood (23 HR)

  • Byron Buxton (20 HR)

  • Oneil Cruz (15 HR)

  • Ronald Acuña Jr. (9 HR)

This field is stacked with some of the best power hitters in the game and we’ll learn the final few names in the coming days. Who you got?

Futures Game

The MLB Futures Game provides a look at the future stars of baseball for fans that may not tap into prospects consistently (unlike crazy people like us at JB).

Check out The Call Up for a breakdown of the rosters on each side for this event⬇️

Just Baseball Trivia of the Week

Our newsletter will have a trivia question every week to test and expand the baseball knowledge of our subscribers! The answer to the weekly trivia question will be at the bottom of the newsletter each week.

Who is the only player ever to win the Home Run Derby three times?

A) Pete Alonso

B) Yoenis Céspedes

C) Ken Griffey Jr.

D) Prince Fielder

All-Star Snubs

Every year players that deserve to make the All-Star Game miss out for a variety of reasons. The baseball community calls them “snubs”. This stems from the dynamic of the fan voting and additional selection aspects of the All-Star Game.

If you’re not a fan of the current system, check out this idea of how to change the All-Star Game from our Leo Morgenstern.

For now, let’s look at the top players who were snubbed from making this roster.

Many big names stand out on this list but none more than Juan Soto. A rough first month as a Met led to a lottttt of overreactions surrounding the richest man in baseball. Despite that slow start, Soto is top 10 in wRC+ in baseball and was the best hitter in the game in June.

Other veteran hitters including Trea Turner and George Springer have had huge years, seemingly better than others who made it at their position groups.

Many pitchers have a case to be made here as well with Framber Valdez standing out as a proven ace who has consistently delivered all season. Cristopher Sanchez has become one of the more underrated arms in baseball as well.

Aside from just players snubbed from the roster entirely, the starting lineups (due to fan voting bias) feature a number of players who simply have not been the best at their respective position.

We polled the Just Baseball staff and Discord community to determine what the starting lineups for the All-Star Game ~should~ have been⬇️

Other Headlines

  • The Nationals decided to clean house as they moved on from General Manager Mike Rizzo and Manager Dave Martinez. This marks a new era for Washington as they head a different direction organizationally just a week before the MLB Draft. Read the full story here!

  • Just Baseball published our Midseason MLB Awards last week, which were voted upon by our entire staff.

Just Baseball Discord

We launched a Just Baseball community on Discord!

Our Discord channel is the ultimate baseball group chat while also providing exclusive access to Peter’s MLB best bets, Aram’s prospect content, giveaways, and direct connection to the entire Just Baseball staff.

Trivia Answer: C) Ken Griffey Jr.

Griffey is the only player to ever win the derby three times (‘94, ‘98, ‘99) while the other three each won the derby twice in their careers.

Just Baseball Merch

Our newest line of merchandise features Adidas performance gear!

We have also restocked on all your favorites including our vintage World Series line, hats, hoodies, City Series line, spring line, and much more.