2026 Baseball Hall of Fame Voting

The Game Room
1

Who would you vote for?

On the ballot:

(Name, Years on ballot, voting % last year if applicable)

Carlos Beltran, 4, 70.3%

I guess Beltran will make it. He piled up a lot of numbers (without ever leading the league in anything) and was an objectively very good player; he wouldn’t be my first choice, as there are better players not yet in. But, then, there are worse payers who ARE in.

Andruw Jones, 9, 66.2%

As it’s a weak ballot, maybe he makes it? Jones was a hell of a defensive player and gusted up to really good as a hitter. I would not vote for him, though.

Chase Utley, 3rd, 39.8%

Utley strikes me as being about as good a player as Jones was, but he is unlikely to EVER make it. He was an underrated player who in his prime was every bit as good as player as Roberto Alomar, and they put Alomar in easily enough.

Alex Rodriguez, 5th, 37.1%

So A-Rod used steroids and he can’t get in; David Ortiz did too, come on, you know he did, and they swept him in.

At some point they’ll put the steroid guys in anyway and all this moralizing will seem stupid.

Manny Ramirez, 10, 34.3%

See A-Rod. Manny was a GREAT hitter. Stupid great. He was a better hitter than Mike Schmidt, who played about the same number of games. The reason Schmidt is a whole career ahead of Manny in WAR is of course because there’s a big difference between a fantastic fielding third baseman and an outfielder who would not have been all that much worse had he not bothered to take his glove out into the field.

Andy Pettite, 8, 27.9%

See Mark Buerhle below? Pettite and Buerhle pitched pretty much the same number of innings, their ERAs are 0.04 apart, and they’re 1.2 WAR apart. They were both lefties and not overpowering. Neither will make the Hall becase their ERAs LOOK bad (3.81, 3.85) but there are way worse pitchers in the Hall. Pettite is the all time winningest postseason pitcher.

Felix “The King” Hernandez 2, 20.6%

A very good pitcher but too short a career.

Bobby Abreu 7, 19.5%

Abreu looks great by WAR but, like some guys, he just doesn’t FEEL like a great player. Wasted his best years on Phillies teams that were really horrible.

Jimmy Rollins 5, 18.0%

I was surprised to note he played 2275 games, which is a lot. To compare another player to Mike Schmidt, they’re only a season apart. Honestly, for some reason I thought Rollins didn’t play nearly that long. Maybe I was thinking of punk singer Henry Rollins, who’s kinda short. Rollins was a HOF level player at his best but his best was only a few years long. Jimmy I mean, not Henry, who will never be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Omar Vizquel 9, 17.8%

Omar was up to 52.6% and would likely have eventually gotten in but then it came out he was a bully and a pervert, so now only one sixth of the BBWAA is willing to look past his being a wife beater and sexual predator.

Dustin Pedroia 2, 11.5%

Pedroia only played 1512 games and still amassed 51 WAR. Had he not gotten hurt in 2017, he’d be a Hall of Fame favourite.

When I looked up his BBREF page I noted in 2008, the year he won the MVP, he had 6.9 WAR. That’s not a huge number for an MVP so I went to the MVP voting page, and actually it was the most of any player who got any votes at all (there were 23.) The league leader in WAR was Nick Markakis, and he didn’t even get a 10th place vote. How bizarre.

Mark Buerhle 6, 11.4

As I have pointed out before, Buerhle is pronoiunced “Burly” and Buerhle was in fact burly. Has there ever been another player whose surname was a LITERAL description of his appearance? Joe Black was African American, and Deacon White was a white guy, but besides “Black” and “White”?

FRancisco Rodriguez 4, 10.2

Saved a bunch of games.

David Wright 3, 8.1

Like Dustin Pedroia, he was a genuinely terrific player who only got to play 2/3rds of a career and it’ll rob him of a spot in the Hall.

Torii Hunter 6, 5.1%

At risk of dropping off. Hunter was not a Hall of Famer, but he was very good, every year, year after year, for many years. He was basically the same guy one season after another from 2001 to 2015, If you mixed up the stat lines for those 15 seasons, you’d never know anything was weird. He played in Minnesota and then he was an Angel and then he did a few years in Detroit and he was the same guy in all those places. If you said “Hey how about the year Torii Hunter hit .299 with 22 homers, 90 RBI and terrific defense?” I’d have no idea what year that was or even in what city.

First Appearance Players

Cole Hamels

Hamels was a terrific pitcher but for whatever reason he didn’t win a huge number of games, went 163-122. Had he been more durable he’d be a serious candidate and he’ll get some votes but I doubt he’ll ever get in, and that’s fine.

Ryan Braun

Fuck this guy.

Alex Gordon

Gordon when he came up was hailed as The Next George Brett - he was a third baseman - which was a silly, unfair comparison even before it was solidly proven he wasn’t. Gordon didn’t make the majors until he was 23; Brett came up at 20 and when he was 23 he won the batting title and was already one of the greatest players in the league. Gordon ended up an outfielder and was pretty good.

Shin-Soo Choo

MLB’s all time leader amongst Korean players in basically every hitting stat and he may stay that way forever because, unless most players from Asian baseball countries, he came over very young, debuting at only 22, never playing pro ball in Korea or Japan until after his MLB career. He signed directly with the Mariners after high school.

Edwin Encarnacion

Encarnacion’s emergence as a terrific power hitter in Toronto came AFTER the Blue Jays realized that he was really not cut out to be a third baseman; he looked not just inept, but terrified. Once hidden at first or DH, boom, piles of homers and RBI every year. It makes you wonder how many players have had their career severely limited because no one ever made the move to stop asking them to do things they couldn’t do so they could focus on what they COULD do.

Howie Kendrick

Played six different positions. He was one of those guys like Cesar Tovar who I suspect was more valuable than the WAR suggests because of the impact a player like that has on the team’;s ability to deploy other players in better situations. Ernie Clement is like that now.

Nick Markakis

As I mentioned upthread, Markakis once led his entire league in WAR, and wasn’t mentioned on a single MVP ballot, not even a tenth place vote. I wonder how often THAT happens? Likely it’s happened to some pitchers, but a hitter?

Hunter Pence

I remember nothing about this guy. I had to look him up to recall him. Guy scored 106 runs for a World Series champion. I feel bad.

Gio Gonzalez

Pretty good pitcher, you know. Went 21-8 one year. Arm starting falling apart at 32. So it goes.

Matt Kemp

Kemp of course had an absolutely monster season in 2011 and just missed the MVP Award. Never did anything like that again. I think he got hurt in 2012; in 2011 he stole 40 bases, and he only stole 41 the remainder of his career after that.

Daniel Murphy

Played just enough to get on the ballot.

Rick Porcello

Porcello won the Cy Young in 2016 when he was 22-4, despite the fact he only got eight first place votes and Justin Verlander got 14, which has to be some sort of record.

Interstingly enough, BBRef thinks Verlander was clearly the better pitcher, 7.4 WAR to Porcello’s 4.7. The funny thing is I don’t see in the underlying number why that is. Porcello allowed pretty much the same number of baserunners in only 4.2 fewer innings, and allowed fewer home runs. Verlander’s ERA was a tiny bit lower, but in a better pitcher’s park, so Porcello has a tiny bit better ERA+.

The difference is strikeouts, I guess? Boston was a better fielding team.

2

Maybe I don’t understand HoF voting fully, but isn’t Pete Rose eligible now? I’d vote for him.

3

From that list, I’d vote only for Utley. 6-time starting All Star. For a 5 year stretch, his WAR was second only to Pujols among position players. Possibly the best base runner I’ve ever seen. And his intangibles—drive, baseball IQ, aggressive play—were off the charts.

I’ve never had more fun watching a player, year after year.

4

By my reckoning, there’s at least 10 players in the Hall who juiced. So I’ve given up on trying to figure it out and I would vote for Ramirez and ARod.

From the rest, I guess just Beltran. Pushing him over the top, for me, is the 1.021 OPS in 65 postseason games. And sucessfully stealing 312 bases in 361 attempts.

5

Thanks for the rundown.

I’d probably vote for Beltran and Utley. Still wouldn’t vote for either Rodriguez or Ramirez, though @RickJay got it right in my case at least–once Ortiz got in it became harder for me to justify leaving other steroid-users out.

As it happens, I visited the Hall of Fame last weekend. The plaques, to me, are the least interesting part of the museum. The museum is so much more–and so much more fascinating–than “who’s in and who’s out.” I’ve heard people complain that “you can’t tell the story of baseball without __,” and that may be true, but ___ is actually in the museum multiple times if he was any good; the plaques are a nice add-on, but not central to the story.

6

What sort of exhibits do they have? I’ve never been.

7

Knowing what criteria voters use, I’ll assume enough voters will hold breaking Tejada’s leg against him and not vote him in.

His attitude and 'roid use, Enough no votes to keep him out.

8

Practically everything! More seriously, lots of artifacts from famous games/famous years/famous players. My nine-year-old grandson was especially taken with things like catchers’ masks from the early 1900s; my daughter’s fiance was most struck by things like bats used by Aaron Judge and videos with famous calls (“Go crazy, folks, go crazy!” “Touch ‘em all, Joe!”); my daughter was most taken with things like jerseys and how they’ve changed over the years. Then there are the baseball cards, the baseball-related sheet music, the displays about African Americans in baseball, women in baseball, Latinos in baseball, scorecards, box scores, newspapers with baseball-related headlines, you name it, they’ve got it. An exercise in nostalgia for me, a baseball fan since the very late sixties, but also very up-to-the-minute.

This was my third visit over the years, by the way…also 1982 and 2010, I believe.

9

You could be right about Utley. On the other hand, Juan Marichal tried to break John Roseboro’s head open with a baseball bat and was elected to the Hall of Fame on the third try.

10

Not on the writer’s ballot, as he fell off a number of years ago. The VC ballot this year doesn’t include any of his prime years (1980 being the cutoff).

11

As a Brewers fan, it pains me a tiny bit to agree with you on this…but, yeah.

Braun was the Brewers’ first legit star in at least a decade, after they let Molitor go in free agency, and after Yount retired. For six seasons, he was outstanding…and, then, the PED stuff came to light, as well as his unfounded accusations against the guy who had handled his test sample in 2011.

He wasn’t the same after his suspension in 2013; even if there hadn’t been the PEDs, and the suspension, his performance alone would put him in the “not good enough, for long enough” camp.

Beyond Braun: it’s not a particularly strong or interesting ballot. None of the other first-timers seem to be HoF caliber to me, and of the returners, only Beltran, A-Rod, and Manny have, IMO, legitimate cases to be made for inclusion (but all three also have serious baggage).

12

Whenever having these discussions, I like to take a look at the JAWS page at baseball-reference. In this instance, second base. It’s interesting to sort the players by different metrics. I was surprised to find that Dustin Pedroia ranked slightly higher in WAR/162 than Utley.

I have a hard time with dWAR and other defensive stats (and lord knows there is no shortage of them) when evaluating a player’s career. I think I’m changing my mind on Utley though; his case is bit like Lou Whitaker’s. Neither ever led the league in any offensive categories or had a top 5 MVP showing. I have to take a bit on faith that their defensive excellence pushes them over the top.

How is that Utley never won a gold glove?

13

These days, he would. Back then it was more eye test, and a guy who was a power hitter didn’t exactly fit people’s mental images of what a Gold Glove second baseman was. In his prime they mostly gave to award to Orlando Hudson, who, in fairness, was a hell of a fielder himself.

14

I’d love to see someone do a database search on this.

Nick had a great year in 2008 in everything that doesn’t (or, at the time, didn’t) count for MVP consideration - 48 doubles, 99 walks (.100 OBP-over-BA), only 10 GIDP, 327 putouts and 17 assists w/ a good range factor - while looking subpar in those things that do (or did) count for the MVP (.306 average, only 20 homers and 87 RsBI from a corner outfielder, played on a last-place team).

Many of the early prospect projection systems when he was coming up figured that his doubles would turn into homers over time, which would have turned him into a multi-All Star and possible HOFer if things went right. As it is, he makes the highly crowded Hall-of-the-very-good.

15

I started doing a hard search and found another one - Barry Larkin in 1988.

16

12 homers and 56 RBIs? What a scrub. KIdding aside, I guess we were still in the Bucky Dent era of light-hitting shortstops: none of his offensive numbers, except his stolen bases, seem particularly impressive.

17

I still hate Manny Machado for effectively ending Pedroia’s career. Pedey probably would have been a solid HOF candidate had his knee not been destroyed.

Andy Pettite was a solid pitcher, but his pick-off move was a balk almost every time, never called.

I don’t think A-Rod or Manny will ever get in. Both for the steroids and for personalities. A-Rod seems like a jerk and Manny was such a lackadaisical fielder, but he did provide some humor out there in left.

18

I don’t think that was much of a factor by then, as slugger Ryne Sandberg won his share before Utley ever played his first game. While we naturally prefer to recognize the guys who are making all the flashy plays, Utley like Cal Ripken apparently was a master at positioning, “invisible range”. Still amazes me that the GG voters could watch or at least be aware of Utley during his entire prime, yet never once feel arsed to give him a single solitary award. Were they simply oblivious, or are the fancy stats too high and hence overrate his glove?

I have the same issue with Andruw Jones; hitting stats have been folded, spindled, mutilated, processed, and pressed so much now that we can be very confident that the current metrics accurately represent the value gained (i.e. wins). I don’t think defensive stats should receive the same amount of confidence, even tho they have improved by leaps and bounds over the years. Since if you regress both men’s gloves just a fair amount they thus fall below the borderline (as a large amount of their value does derive from their defense, and given their brief careers and large falloffs in their 30’s from their peaks they don’t have the longevity necessary), I remain on the No side for both.

I’ve watched that Machado slide on Pedroia (note DP was my fave player), and I don’t see a hard dirty slide, I see a guy coming into second, sliding, having his lead foot pop up a bit after it hits the bag, and impact the side of Dustin’s knee at a very low rate of speed. Looks to me like a very tragic case of Murphy’s Law, and note Machado immediately realized that DP was hurt and showed concern, even tried to catch him afterwards.

19

1988 was a very low scoring year, one of the lowest since 1968. The stretch from 1988-1992 saw oddly low offense.

20

It is a pretty weak list. Beltran has a career 70 WAR. Other than A-Rod that’s the highest on the list. To me that’s borderline. I suppose I would probably vote for him. If I had a vote I would vote for A-Rod. I’m done with the hypocrisy. I don’t think I would vote for Manny. On top of his baggage he only has a 69.3 WAR.

Pettite is at 60.2 WAR. It’s low but the average pitching WAR is 66 which is thrown off by some of the ridiculously high numbers of early 1900s pitchers. Not many pitchers have the opportunity to make 44 post seasons appearances. His importance in the post season can’t be ignored. All in all I don’t think his numbers are quite good enough.