Aaron Judge is the American League’s first named All-Star.

The Yankees slugger earned an automatic All-Star bid after being the American League’s leading vote-getter, MLB announced Thursday. Judge led all players, including the National League, with 4,012,983 votes.

Shohei Ohtani earned his automatic big by leading the National League in votes.

The selection doesn’t come as a surprise as Judge is having another MVP-caliber season. Entering play Thursday, Judge is slashing .361/.461/.719 with an OPS of 1.180. He leads the major leagues with his .361 batting average, is second in the majors with 28 homers and is tied for fifth in the league with 63 RBI.

This is Judge’s seventh time being named an All-Star and the fifth consecutive year he’ll be playing in the Midsummer Classic.

In addition, Yankees first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and DH Ben Rice have advanced as finalists.

Goldschmidt is having a resurgent year in his first season in the Bronx. The right-hander is slashing .288/.346/.432 with a .778 OPS.

The Yankees’ first baseman will be going up against Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to be named a starter for the American League. If Goldschmidt wins, it’ll be his eighth selection and his first since 2022.

As for Rice, the left-handed slugger has had a solid second year with the Yankees. He’s slashing .238/.324/.489 with an OPS of .814 to go with his 14 home runs and 29 RBI. Opposing Rice is Baltimore’s Ryan O’Hearn. With the trade of Rafael Devers, the field is open for Rice to earn his first career All-Star selection.

The Mets will receive a big boost heading into this weekend’s series against the Pirates, as Mark Vientos is officially set to make his return from the IL. 

Vientos has been sidelined since the beginning of the month with a hamstring strain. 

The youngster had gotten off to a bit of a slow start at the plate this season, but there’s no denying that adding him back into the middle of this struggling lineup could provide a huge boost. 

“Mark is a big part of our team,” Carlos Mendoza said. “We saw it in the playoffs last year, he drives the ball to all fields, gives you good at-bats, and the power is real — if we get him going, we’re talking about a deep lineup 1 through 9. He’s a guy who can hit anywhere in the lineup, so it just adds to the quality of our roster.”

Vientos’ return also puts the Mets in a bit of a conundrum, as their infield depth suddenly gets a whole lot more crowded and they’ll have to open up another roster spot prior to the 25-year-old’s activation. 

While it’s a tough decision to make, Mendoza says it’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

“This continues to be a puzzle,” he explained. “There are going to be a few spots that are going to be rotating and I think that’s a good problem to have — I’ve been saying since day one, talking about the depth, how good our team is because of the quality and quantity we have. 

“So there will be at-bats for everyone in there who is on the active roster, and we’ll make sure that we are communicating with them on a daily basis and they understand that we’re here to win baseball games.”

Ronny Mauricio has been viewed as one of the candidates to go back down — though the skipper did say there’s a possibility we could see him stick around even with Vientos and Brett Baty on the roster. 

Mauricio was brought back up to the big leagues earlier than the team had hoped following Vientos’ injury, and while he’s looked a bit overmatched at times, he’s coming off one of his best showings to this point. 

The youngster picked up three hits, including a solo homer on Wednesday night.

“I’ve been impressed with how he’s handled the adversity,” Mendoza said. “I haven’t been around him much because he spent all of last year rehabbing and this year, in spring training he wasn’t really around much just being in the training room and the backfields. 

“Watching him after missing so much time and struggling, he’s being the same guy, continues to work and asks for feedback for help — it was finally good to see a really good game from him last night, we hope to see that same version moving forward.”

Clayton Kershaw got to the precipice of history on Thursday afternoon. And now, when he inevitably crosses the 3,000 career strikeout milepost, it will almost certainly happen on his home mound.

In the Dodgers’ 3-1 win against the Colorado Rockies, Kershaw struck out five batters over a six-inning, one-run start to move to 2,997 punchouts for his career.

For a moment, it seemed as if Kershaw might be able to eclipse the threshold on Thursday. At the end of the sixth inning, he had thrown only 69 pitches while mowing through a free-swinging Rockies lineup.

Alas, manager Dave Roberts gave his 37-year-old left-hander an early hook, turning a narrow late-game lead over to his bullpen — and preserving the opportunity for Kershaw’s milestone moment to happen back at Dodger Stadium during next week’s homestand.

Read more:Max Muncy gets help from the rain, then hits a grand slam to lead Dodgers past hapless Rockies

“I would argue there might be a temptation to take him out [today] and let him go for it in front of the home fans,” Roberts said pregame, when asked if he would consider extending Kershaw’s leash to let him chase his 3,000th strikeout on Thursday. “I’m not going to force anything.”

Ever since Kershaw returned from offseason foot and knee surgeries in May, and showed an ability to produce even with a diminished fastball and increasing mileage on his arm, his pursuit of 3,000 strikeouts has felt less like an “if” than a “when.”

Entering Thursday, his career total was up to 2,992, leaving him just eight shy of becoming the 20th pitcher in MLB history, and only the fourth left-hander, to join the prestigious 3K club.

“I guess ultimately the last box he needs to check for his future Hall of Fame career is that 3,000-strikeout threshold,” Roberts said. “We’re all waiting in anticipation.”

More impressively, though, Kershaw has been winning games and limiting runs for the Dodgers (51-31), improving to 4-0 with a 3.03 earned-run average through eight starts this season.

“I think there’s good days and bad days, good pitches and bad pitches,” Kershaw said. “Not as consistent, not as perfect as I would want. But the results have been OK. And at the end of the day, we’re winning games that I’ve been on the mound. So I’m thankful for that. Just a product of being on a great team.”

Kershaw wasn’t exactly expecting to reach the 3,000 mark Thursday, acknowledging that “eight in Colorado is never going to be easy to do.”

Over his first two innings, however, he quickly inched closer. Thairo Estrada whiffed on a curveball in the first inning. And though Brenton Doyle hit a solo homer in the second, Kershaw set Michael Toglia and Orlando Arcia both down swinging with a slider and curveball, respectively.

“I just love that edge that he gives each start day,” Roberts said. “We certainly feed off that.”

Kershaw didn’t get another strikeout until the end of the fifth, retiring the side with a slider that froze Braxton Fulford for a called third strike. An inning before that, he was bailed out by his defense after his lone walk, when Miguel Rojas turned a spinning double-play up the line at third base to erase the free pass.

“It could’ve been one run in, runner on second, nobody out,” Kershaw said. “So to turn that double-play there was kind of a game-changer. … Biggest play of the day.”

Still, in the sixth, all eyes returned to Kershaw’s strikeout total after Tyler Freeman was rung up on a generous outside strike call to finish off an eight-pitch at-bat.

Though it would have required striking out the side, Kershaw was as little as one inning away from No. 3,000.

Instead, Roberts decided to end his day, ensuring that the next time Kershaw takes the mound — likely to be next Wednesday at home against the Chicago White Sox — he will need only three more strikeouts to do something only two pitchers before have ever done: Have a 3,000-strikeout career while playing for only one team.

“It would be very special,” Kershaw said of potentially reaching the milestone at Dodger Stadium. “It would be.”

Read more:Michael Conforto shows signs of life in Dodgers’ win over Rockies

Ohtani to pitch Saturday

While Kershaw mowed through the Rockies (18-63), Shohei Ohtani delivered the biggest swing of the day for the Dodgers, padding what was only a 2-1 lead in the seventh with a solo home run to right, his NL-leading 28th of the year.

The blast came hours after the other big news of the day, with Roberts confirming pregame that the two-way star will make his next start as a pitcher on Saturday against the Kansas City Royals.

That game will mark Ohtani’s third pitching outing of the season and could be his first in which he goes beyond the first inning. Last week, Roberts hinted at the possibility of Ohtani — who is still building up in his return from Tommy John surgery — pitching into the second inning, but he has continued to leave any final decisions open-ended.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Former Tampa Bay Rays star Wander Franco was found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor on Thursday in the Dominican Republic, according to Juan Arturo Recio of ESPN’s Dominican outlet.

His sentence for an illegal sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl is reportedly a two-year suspended prison sentence, allowing him to remain free so long as he meets certain conditions, such as not approaching minors for sexual purposes. Prosecutors had been seeking a five-year sentence.

The minor’s mother, who was convicted on sex trafficking charges, reportedly received 10 years in prison.

MLB released a statement soon after Franco’s sentence was reported, confirming it would finish its own investigation of Franco at some point in the future:

“Major League Baseball is proud to have a collectively bargained Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy that reflects our commitment to these issues. We are aware of today’s verdict in the Wander Franco trial and will conclude our investigation at the appropriate time.”

The Rays, who still hold Franco’s contract rights as long as he remains on the restricted list, released their own statement Thursday:

“We respect the legal process in the Dominican Republic and believe it is important to allow it to run its course. 

“We will continue to fully cooperate with Major League Baseball as it monitors the situation.

“Out of respect for everyone involved, we will not be providing any further comment at this time.”

Per the Associated Press, Franco was accused of having a four-month relationship with the girl and transferring thousands of dollars to her mother to consent to the illegal relationship. He has experienced separate legal issues since returning to the D.R., including accusations from two other girls.

Wander Franco’s MLB career is basically over

Less than two years ago, Franco was emerging as one of the younger faces of MLB. After signing a team-record, 11-year, $182 million contract, he was positioned as the cornerstone of a competitive Rays franchise. It all came crashing down almost overnight, first with some social media posts airing the allegations — which landed him first on administrative leave, then on the restricted list — and then with a slow drip of details as the case was investigated in the D.R.

Franco is now out of prison, but his MLB career is on hold indefinitely. He remains on MLB’s restricted list, essentially unpaid leave as that contract burns up. A sex crimes conviction against a minor will likely be a major obstacle for him ever getting a work visa back into the U.S., which he needs if he wants to play in MLB again.

A similar situation played out with former Pittsburgh Pirates reliever Felipe Vázquez, who was placed on the restricted list after he was arrested on a litany of charges involving sex crimes with a child in the United States. He was deported to his native Venezuela after serving out his prison sentence and has not appeared in MLB since, though he has played in the Venezuelan league.