Carlos Beltran in 2017 playing for the Houston Astros. He became mired in the sign stealing scheme that delayed his election into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)
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It wasn’t a strong ballot. That was a given. And the results of this year’s National Baseball Hall of Fame vote by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America are lackluster at best.
There were no first-time gimmes on Tuesday. Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones were holdovers elected at 84.2% and 78.4% respectively on the 425 ballots. Those are usually secondary election numbers. Anybody elected to the Hall has to garner 75% of the vote.
Of the 12 players on the ballot for the first time, 11 of them didn’t get 5% and won’t have another chance. Only Cole Hamels in that first-year subclass with 23.8% will be on the ballot again.
For better or worse, the Class of 2026 is Beltran, Jones and Jeff Kent, who was elected last month by the Contemporary Era Committee. They will be inducted July 26 on the stage behind the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, N.Y. Plenty of good seats are still available.
Beltran, who played for seven teams, was scarred by the Houston Astros’ sign stealing scandal in 2017 – his last year as a player – and took four times to be elected because of it.
Jones, despite 10-gold gloves as a center fielder for the Atlanta Braves and 434 career home runs, was a .254 lifetime hitter with a 112 OPS+. Other great Hall of Fame center fielders? Mickey Mantle had an OPS+ of 172. Willie Mays, 155.
Kent, the second baseman with the most home runs ever – 377 overall and 351 in games he started at that position – never earned more than 46.5% on the writers’ ballot. And that was in his last of 10 seasons.
Major League Baseball is starting to run out of players worthy of election to the Hall.
Beltran Overcame Sign Stealing Stigma To Make Hall
Beltran had just been named manager of the New York Mets in 2019 when the rulings from MLB came down about the Astros. He was fired a few months later. Now he’s back with the Mets as a special assistant and is talking about going into the Hall with the NY emblem on his plaque.
“There’s no doubt along the way in your career you’re going to make bad decisions,” Beltran said in a conference call Tuesday after the election. “When I retired from the game of baseball despite all the good relationships I had I thought I was going to be lost. But I still received love from my teammates and other players.”
For Beltran, the supposed architect of the sign stealing caper, this was a bad decision.
There were many other players who made “bad decisions” on this ballot and the ballot of the recent Contemporary Era Committee.
On this one, three players – Jones, Manny Ramirez and Omar Vizquel – had all been charged at one time with assaulting their wives. None of them earned my vote because of that.
Ramirez had the double-dip of assault charges and suspension from the Los Angeles Dodgers because of PED use. He had 38.8% of the vote in his 10th and final time on the BBWAA ballot. And if one judges by what happened to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on the recent 16-person Era Committee ballot, Ramirez will never be heard from in the Hall conversation again.
Bonds and Clemens, as I wrote last month, received the death sentence when they each earned less than five votes. They were suspected of PED use, but never tested positive. Both aren’t eligible for the next Contemporary Era Committee ballot. If they get selected in 2031, and receive less than five votes again, they will no longer be eligible for the Hall.
Other candidates on the current BBWAA ballot affected by drug use and suspension were Alex Rodriguez, Andy Pettitte and Ryan Braun.
Braun, who was suspended along with Rodriguez, got 3.5% of the vote and is off the ballot also never to be heard from again. Rodriguez, with some of the best overall offensive numbers in MLB history, sits at 40% with five more years to go. Recent patterns by the BBWAA voters indicate he’s not going to get there.
Pettitte, despite admitting using HGH to recover from an injury, is starting to get some traction with two more years left on the BBWAA ballot. He’s gone from 9.9% in his initial year of 2019 to 48.5% now, jumping 20.6% in a year, but has a long way to go.
Jones Took Advantage Of A Slim Hall Ballot
Many times, the makeup of a ballot like this one can contribute to a heretofore marginal candidate like Jones getting elected. In the final five years of his career for four teams as he gained weight, starting with the Dodgers in 2008, Jones batted .210 with a .740 OPS and a below average 95 OPS+. The league average is 100. He wasn’t the semblance of the player he was for 12 seasons in Atlanta. He was released by the Dodgers, who had to pay off the remainder of his $21.4 million free-agent contract.
Jones went from 7.3% in 2018, his first year on the ballot, to being elected this year, his ninth. It had been a tough nine years, he acknowledged. “These are things you can’t control. Whatever happens, happens. You don’t play this game to make the Hall of Fame. You play this game to win championships.”
To that point, his Braves teams won one World Series out of the five they participated in – 1995 against the then Cleveland Indians. Yet, Jones is the eighth member of those Braves to be enshrined in the Hall. The others are pitchers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, third baseman Chipper Jones, first baseman Fred McGriff, manager Bobby Cox and general manager John Schuerholz. Good for them.
The Yankees of that era, who won the World Series four times – two of them over the Braves – have three Hall of Famers: shortstop Derek Jeter, closer Mariano Rivera and manager Joe Torre. They were all elected on their various first ballots. That’s a pretty big disparity.
Rivera was a unanimous selection in 2019, the only one in Hall history. Jeter missed that lofty status by a single vote in 2020.
Jones will take his 78.4% and 333 of 425 votes on his ninth ballot. But in 2026 those figures tell you exactly where the Hall voting is.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrymbloom/2026/01/21/carlos-beltran-andruw-jones-latest-additions-to-baseball-hall-of-fame/
