Shohei Ohtani narrowly leads the voting to start the Major League Baseball All-Star Game as the designated hitter for the American League, according to preliminary results released Thursday by MLB.com. The Los Angeles Angels two-way star received 51 percent of votes for the AL DH starting spot in a head-to-head ballot against Houston Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez, who tallied 49 percent. The pair progressed to the second-phase runoff after receiving the most votes among AL DH candidates in the first phase of the ballot. The top four outfielders and the top two in every other position went thro…