Major League Baseball

In the 'Zona: Goldschmidt moves up to 2nd in All-Star vote

Published Jun. 11, 2014 3:20 p.m. ET

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A few mid-day odds and ends from the worldwide web as we slowly ease our way over the hump.

Paul Goldschmidt is making a move in the NL All-Star voting, jumping from fifth to second among National League first basemen. With more than 784,000 votes, he's still more than 104K behind the Dodgers' Adrian Gonzalez.

For those of you who are statistically curious, Goldschmidt has 13 home runs, 48 RBI, a .309 average and a .930 OPS, while Gonzalez counters with 12, 39, .250 and .790. There's still time to remedy the injustice. You can do so by clicking here.

Elsewhere in the NL All-Star balloting, the positional leaders are St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina, Philadelphia second baseman Chase Utley, New York third baseman David Wright, Colorado shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, outfielders Yasiel Puig of the Dodgers, Giancarlo Stanton of Miami and Carlos Gomez of Milwaukee.

On the AL side, it's catcher Matt Wieters and DH Nelson Cruz of Baltimore, first baseman Miguel Cabrera of Detroit, second baseman Robinson Cano of Seattle, third baseman Josh Donaldson of Oakland, shortstop Derek Jeter of New York and outfielders Jose Bautista and Melky Cabrera of Toronto and Mike Trout of L.A.

You can argue that there's more than a few puzzlers here, but nothing so puzzling as farther down in the AL outfield voting. Down there in 15th position with 396,00 votes -- in other words, better than 30 other starting outfielders -- is one David Lough. In case you are unfamiliar, he's hitting .185 in 108 ABs for Baltimore. Yikes -- hate to see who's in positions 16 through 45.

From the looking on the bright side file, this particular note was tucked down in the "Draft Leftovers" section on GammonsDaily.com, produced by the great Peter Gammons.

The Diamondbacks drafted right-hander Touki Toussaint with the 16th pick in last week's draft.

"€œTouki Toussaint (Arizona, Round 1) has the best curveball I'€™ve ever seen,€" says one scouting director. €"He was 99 the day we saw him with that curveball. His ceiling is boundless."€

One more from the MLB file, courtesy of ArizonaSports.com: Today marks the one-year anniversary of the course-altering Diamondbacks-Dodgers brawl featuring Ian Kennedy, Zack Greinke, Eric Hinske and a cast of tens.

From June 11 forward through the end of the season, the Dodgers went 64-36 and from 8 1/2 games back in the NL West to 11 games ahead; the D-backs 45-52. Expanding that to a full 365 days, the records are 99-67 Dodgers, 74-90 Diamondbacks.

A couple of updates  from the Old Pueblo.

The ill-attended Match Play Golf Championship is no more -- but it'll be replaced on the Tucson golf calendar by a Champions Tour event at Tucson National next March.

And senior wide receiver Garic Wharton has announced plans to transfer from Rich Rodriguez's program. Wharton, who has already graduated, will be eligible to play right away. He has 36 catches for 555 yards and four TDs in his career, but with the return of Austin Hill and a bevy of promising youngsters, playing time would have been hard to come by.

In case you missed it, the Phoenix Business Journal reports that Tostitos is out as title sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl.

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