It's official now, via press release from Major League Baseball, including vote totals and some information about Thursday's Twitter campaign:
The creative campaigns are over. Twitter voting ended in a furious rally. And at the end of the four-day online voting program, it is Chris Sale of the Chicago White Sox and Anthony Rizzo of the Chicago Cubs who were chosen by fans as the winners of the 2014 All-Star Game MLB.com Final Vote Sponsored by Experian. Sale and Rizzo earned the final two AL and NL All-Star Team roster spots through online voting on MLB.com, the individual Club sites and Twitter, where designated player hashtags counted during the final six hours of voting. On the NL ballot, Rizzo passed Justin Morneau (Colorado) on Wednesday night and ultimately held off both Morneau and the leading Twitter vote-getter, Justin Upton (Atlanta). Rizzo received 8.8 million votes and became the first Cubs player to win the All-Star MLB.com Final Vote. The top three were followed by Anthony Rendon (Washington) and Casey McGehee (Miami). The AL winner, Sale, became the fourth White Sox player to win the All-Star Game MLB.com Final Vote, using his 6.7 million votes to join Paul Konerko (2011); A.J. Pierzynski (2006); and Scott Podsednik (2005) as Chicago’s South Side winners. Sale held off a late charge from Garrett Richards, who trailed only Upton in Twitter voting. Fellow AL starting pitchers Rick Porcello (Detroit), Corey Kluber (Cleveland) and Dallas Keuchel (Houston) followed Sale and Richards. This year’s All-Star Game MLB.com Final Vote Sponsored by Experian concluded with an incredible sustained average of 65,000 votes per minute across the multiple balloting platforms over the final six hours today, including a dramatic final 10 minutes before the 4:00 p.m. (ET) deadline when Twitter voting accounted for nearly one-quarter of all votes cast.
So it was an all-Chicago victory. Congratulations to Rizzo and Sale, both well-deserving. Rizzo's 20 home runs are second in the National League and represent the first time a Cub has had 20 or more homers by the All-Star break since Derrek Lee had 27 in 2005.
Rizzo had a busy day, also being the centerpiece of some extracurricular activity between the Cubs and Reds dugouts during Thursday's win. (Let's make it clear that Rizzo wasn't the instigator, someone in the Reds dugout was.)
It was fun to participate in the #VoteRizzo campaign via Twitter, though it did tend to crowd out pretty much everything else in my Twitter timeline much of the morning and afternoon. I look forward to seeing Rizzo and Starlin Castro Tuesday in Minneapolis.