On final day of voting, Adam Jones appreciates the All-Star support

With fan balloting for the All-Star game ending at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time tonight, Orioles center fielder Adam Jones is still very much in the hunt to get voted to start for the American League.

In the most recent voting released Monday, Jones was in fifth place among AL outfielders, but was just 88,285 votes out of third. Jose Bautista of Toronto and Mike Trout of Los Angeles hold the two top spots, with Yoenis Cespedes of Oakland, Melky Cabrera of Toronto and Jones battling for that third spot. As of Monday, here are the totals for those three players:

Cespedes - 1,941,553
Cabrera - 1,929,506
Jones - 1,853,268

The Orioles posted this on their Twitter page this afternoon:

Your votes are working, #Birdland! @SimplyAJ10 is closing the gap for the final OF spot. Let's make this happen: http://t.co/XqlWMlvKaJ

-- Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) July 3, 2014

Jones was selected to the team as a reserve in 2009 and 2012, and was an elected starter by fan vote last year.

"It is always cool to be recognized among your peers," Jones said today.

Jones said he appreciates the support he has gotten and that the O's organization has tried to help his cause.

"The support comes from everywhere," he said. "It starts with the organization and all the things they can do. It filters into the community. To everybody that helped out and everybody that even cast one vote, you have my appreciation.

"I took a picture with a lady out front. She said she voted over 21,000 times. That's amazing. I wouldn't do that for anybody. That means a lot to me as a player that she would take her precious time to click vote over and over and over again."

Jones is batting .307 with 18 doubles, two triples, 16 homers and 52 RBIs. He is slugging .510 with an OPS of .840. In 28 games in June, Jones batted .348 with nine homers, 20 RBIs and a 1.026 OPS.

As someone that plays every day and plays with high intensity every day, Jones admits four days off during the All-Star break would be nice. But he also enjoys being a part of baseball's mid-summer showcase.

"Yeah, I have an idea what I would do with four days off," he said. "Maybe go to the Hamptons and relax a bit and get away from everything. But it comes with the game. You want to be one of the players playing at that level. If you hold yourself to that accountability you want to reel off you know, eight, nine, 10 (in a row) however many you can.

"It's cool to see people that are eight-time All-Stars or 10-time All-Stars. My mentor T.G. (Tony Gwynn) was a 15-time All-Star. Think it's cool to reel them off if you can and hold yourself accountable to the level of play you think you should play at."