Harper becomes youngest NL All-Star starter; Davis leads balloting

NEW YORK — Bryce Harper has smashed barriers and made uncommon occurrences routine since his teens, and the pattern continued Saturday afternoon as a late flood of fans’ votes made the former Las Vegas High and College of Southern Nevada standout the youngest National League starter in the history of the All-Star Game.

Baltimore slugger Chris Davis powered past Detroit Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera in the final week to claim the most fan votes in All-Star game balloting.

Right-hander Max Scherzer was one of a major league-best six Tigers chosen for the All-Star game July 16 at Citi Field in New York. St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina led the NL fan vote announced Saturday night. He is one of the Cardinals’ five All-Stars, tops in the NL.

“I think any time you are getting that recognition not only from your fan base but from everybody across the nation I think it feels good to know that people are watching,” Davis said.

Mets young ace Matt Harvey and third baseman David Wright will represent the host team in the 84th All-Star game. Harvey received the most votes among NL pitchers in the player balloting, outpacing the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw.

Cuban defector Yasiel Puig wasn’t picked — not yet, at least. The Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder with just one breathless month in the big leagues is among five candidates for the final NL spot, with fans able to vote online through Thursday.

Puig is joined in the final NL five by shortstop Ian Desmond of Washington, first basemen Freddie Freeman of Atlanta, Adrian Gonzalez of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and outfielder Hunter Pence of San Francisco.

The American League’s five are all relievers: Detroit’s Joaquin Benoit, Toronto’s Steve Delabar, the Yankees’ David Robertson, Texas’ Tanner Scheppers, and Boston’s Koji Uehara.

New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera was one of the 68 players selected. The 43-year-old career saves leader will hop across town as part of his retirement tour for a 13th All-Star appearance, second most by a pitcher behind Hall of Famer Warren Spahn, who made 17 teams.

“The fact that I went through all the adversity and I’m standing here talking about the All-Star game ... it’s a privilege,” said Rivera, who has 29 saves this year after missing nearly all of last season with a torn knee ligament.

Davis finished with 8,272,243 fan votes to edge Cabrera, who had 8,013,874, for his first All-Star selection. Davis has 33 homers, seventh best before the break in big league history.

Davis is the second first-time All-Star to lead the voting, joining Seattle outfielder Ichiro Suzuki (2001).

The first baseman with the cool nickname of “Crush” is one of three Orioles to be selected by fans, the first time that has happened since Cal Ripken Jr. was one of the picks in 1997.

Shortstop J.J. Hardy and center fielder Adam Jones will take the field with Davis. Baltimore third baseman Manny Machado was picked as a reserve.

Scherzer is the first pitcher to start a season 13-0 since Rgoer Clemens in 1986. He was joined from Detroit by first baseman Prince Fielder, shortstop Jhonny Peralta, and outfielder Torii Hunter. Tigers manager Jim Leyland, who will run the AL squad after leading Detroit to the World Series, picked his ace Justin Verlander for the team.

“This is not a simple thing, but I’m proud of it,” Leyland said. “We worked hard on it. We’re not going to be perfect. I put a lot of time and thought into it. I had a lot of help. It’s still not going to make everybody happy. There’s going to be guys who should be All-Stars who are left off. That happens every year.”

Third base was a talent-laden position, and one player to be left off the AL roster was Oakland’s Josh Donaldson. The Athletics’ one selection was 40-year-old pitcher Bartolo Colon.

Colon is an All-Star for the first time since 2005, when he won the AL Cy Young Award with the Angels. At 11-3 with a 2.73 ERA, Colon is making his third All-Star team. This one comes, though, after he began the season finishing a 50-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs.

The 20-year-old Harper trailed Justin Upton by several thousand votes, but he homered in his return from the disabled list this week and moved into the lead. Fellow rookie of the year Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels was voted to his first All-Star start, too.

On Tuesday, Harper trailed Braves left fielder Justin Upton by 15,000 votes for the final starting outfield spot. His popularity and return from the disabled list Monday propelled him to Citi Field on July 16, where he will likely start in center field between Carlos Gonzalez and Carlos Beltran.

Only three position players younger than Harper have started an All-Star Game, all from the American League. Harper will become the youngest hitter to start since Ken Griffey Jr., who made the lineup in 1990 — two years before Harper was born — at age 20. Al Kaline and Jerry Walker are the other two 20-year-olds who edged Harper.

Though Harper’s season has since been stalled by injury, he still enters today’s game hitting .263 with 13 home runs and 28 RBIs — five of those RBIs coming in Washington’s 5-4 victory over the San Diego Padres on Saturday.

Harper played only after lobbying Davey Johnson after the Washington manager said Friday night that he was probably going to give the young slugger the rest of the weekend off.

He changed his manager’s mind with a light-hearted text later in the evening.

“In his text he said, ‘Play me or trade me,’ ” Johnson said. “And so since trading’s out of the question I guess I’m going to play him.”

He walked with the bases loaded in the third, hit an RBI single in the fifth and drove in the tying run in the seventh with a sacrifice fly.

“Yeah, I mean I was pretty serious about what I said,” Harper said of his text. “You know I want to play. I want to play every day and if he wants to put me in the lineup then I want to be in the lineup. And if he doesn’t then I’m going to try and make him put me in the lineup.

“It’s something that I want to do every day and I’m going to grind through everything I do and play as hard as I can and good things happen.”

Since returning from the disabled list and homering in his first at-bat Monday night against the Milwaukee Brewers, Harper had gone 0-for-18 before his RBI single. He was 0-for-4 with a sacrifice fly in Friday night’s 8-5 win over San Diego.

Before Saturday’s game, Harper said his recent injury would not prevent him from playing in the July 16 showcase.

Overall, 30 players will be making their first All-Star appearance.

In the NL, where the preseason favorites are trailing their divisions, no players from the three first-place teams were selected by fans as starters. But the Central-leading Pittsburgh Pirates, with baseball’s best record at 53-32, landed four players on the squad for the first time since 1981: closer Jason Grilli, right-hander Jeff Locke, third baseman Pedro Alvarez, and outfielder Andrew McCutchen.

Adam Kilgore for The Washington Post contributed to this report