{"id":780821,"date":"2026-07-05T00:51:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T00:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/780821\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T00:51:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T00:51:17","slug":"blue-jays-guerrero-jr-turns-down-all-star-invite-cease-and-varland-heading-to-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/780821\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays&#8217; Guerrero Jr. turns down all-star invite, Cease and Varland heading to game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Guerrero Jr. was named a starter, but has decided to turn down his invitation to recuperate and prepare for the second half of the season. He revealed he&#8217;s been playing through lower back issues for close to a month.<\/p>\n<p>The 27-year-old&#8217;s selection came as a surprise since he&#8217;s struggled mightily through the first half of the year. He had a slash line of .268\/.349\/.350 with just four home runs and 35 RBI entering Saturday. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the sixth straight all-star selection of Guerrero Jr.&#8217;s career.<\/p>\n<p>Cease makes the team with a 2.79 ERA and 1.185 WHIP through 16 starts. He also leads the American League with 137 strikeouts. It&#8217;s the first selection of Cease&#8217;s eight-year career.<\/p>\n<p>Varland makes the first all-star team of his career due to his dominant 2026 since taking over the closer role for the Blue Jays. The 28-year-old is a perfect 18-for-18 in save opportunities with a 0.96 ERA and 0.957 WHIP in 47 innings pitched.<\/p>\n<p>Ernie Clement was already named the starting second baseman for the all-star game, and John Schneider will serve as the manager. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guerrero Jr. was named a starter, but has decided to turn down his invitation to recuperate and prepare&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-780821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}