For the first time in four years, the Baseball Hall of Fame is likely to have a new class with multiple members being voted in when the Baseball Writers’ Association of America announces its 2024 inductees on Tuesday.
Adrian Beltre and Joe Mauer are practically locks to get in on their first year on the ballot and Todd Helton and Billy Wagner are also closing in on induction, according to ballot-tracker Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs on X).
Helton was at 82.5 percent and Wagner at 78.4 percent as of Monday morning, with 75 percent of the vote from the BBWAA needed for induction.
Final percentages typically drop a few percentage points from the tabulation of early publicly released ballots.
Gary Sheffield looks like he’ll come up just short of the 75 percent necessary in his final year of eligibility for voting, but he has a chance. If he falls short, he’ll have to rely on a future veterans committee.
While Andruw Jones likely won’t get in this year, he’s set to move up from 58.1 percent in 2023 to about 70 percent, as his career is treated with more appreciation.
Among other first-timers on this year’s ballot, Chase Utley was at 40.7 percent on Monday and David Wright was at 6.7 percent, according to @NotMrTibbs’ numbers.
About half of all the ballots had been released publicly by Monday morning.
And then there’s Alex Rodriguez, whose Hall of Fame candidacy is complicated by his checkered past due to his admitted steroid use.
After getting just 35.7 percent of the vote last year — his second year of eligibility — Rodriguez isn’t tracking much better this time around.
As of Monday morning, he was at just 39.2 percent, only a slight increase from a year ago, with no marked progress from his initial appearance on the ballot in 2022, when Rodriguez came in at 34.3.
Rodriguez is one of the names most associated with the steroid era that not only wreaked havoc on the game, but also the Hall of Fame voting process.
The rampant use of steroids in the early part of this century not only skewered numbers on the field, but resulted in the number of players elected to the Cooperstown cratering.
A year ago, only Scott Rolen was voted in and in 2022, David Ortiz was the lone player to get enough of the vote.
That followed the 2021 vote, in which no players got to 75 percent, with a ballot filled with controversial names such as Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
Not since Derek Jeter and Larry Walker were both voted in on the 2020 ballot has more than one player been voted in by the writers in the same year — and it’s been since 2019 that more than two have gotten in, with Mariano Rivera, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez and Mike Mussina highlighting that class.
Carlos Beltran, who seemed destined for Cooperstown before his involvement in Houston’s 2017 sign-stealing scandal became public in 2019, has seen his prospects improve from a year ago, his first on the ballot.
He finished last year at just 46.5 percent and entered Monday with 66.5 percent.
That kind of leap from one year to the next would seem to put Beltran in a good spot for eventual induction.
Looking ahead to next year’s first-timers, Ichiro Suzuki is a sure bet to get in immediately, with CC Sabathia, Felix Hernandez and Dustin Pedroia all with a good chance to get in at some point.
The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee voted in Jim Leyland last month, with Lou Piniella and Bill White coming up a few votes short of induction.