Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones Headline a Historic 2026 Hall of Fame Class, Plus What It Means Going Forward

For the third year in a row (and tenth time in the last twelve elections), the Baseball Writers Association of America has inducted multiple players into the Hall of Fame. For 2026, centerfielders Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones will be joining Veterans Committee pick Jeff Kent on the stage in Cooperstown this July. And behind them, we saw a lot of interesting developments with downballot candidates that will end up shaping the next few Hall of Fame ballots.

Full voting results per the BBWAA:

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— Ryan Thibodaux (@notmrtibbs.com) January 20, 2026 at 3:23 PM

But first, let’s start with the inductees. First, it’s actually a little bit of a shock to see the writers inducting a centerfielder, let alone a pair of them simultaneously like Beltrán and Jones. The BBWAA had only inducted eight* of them period prior to today, with no overlaps in their election years. As Jayson Stark noted on social media, the writers had only added two center fielders total to the Hall’s ranks over the last 45 years combined (between Ken Griffey Jr. in 2018 and Kirby Puckett in 2001; you have to go back to Duke Snider in 1980 to find a third). The Veterans process had done some things over the years to help correct this, but on the whole, the position was probably underrepresented in Cooperstown on the whole. 

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*There is some flexibility here, given positions can change. For example, Andre Dawson (inducted in 2010) played his early days in center, and that’s where he accumulated the majority of his value. But he did play more games in right field by the end of his career, and that’s notably where he was during his 1987 MVP season. I’m going by what MLB and the Hall itself have been using here (picture taken from the MLB Network broadcast).



And even setting all of that aside, this is certainly a solid pair of players to be inducting! We’ll start with Beltrán, who cleared the 75% line for induction with ease, landing at 84.2% on his fourth ballot. The advanced stats side of the community has historically been a big supporter of his candidacy, with career WAR totals (70.0 according to Baseball-Reference, 67.4 by Fangraphs’ version) that traditionally indicate a very likely Hall of Famer.

Which makes it funny to note that by most traditional metrics, Beltrán still had a very strong case! Over 20 seasons with the Royals, Astros, Mets, Giants, Cardinals, Yankees, and Rangers, Carlos amassed 2725 hits, 435 home runs, 565 doubles, and 312 steals, all of which are impressive totals even before you get into the deeper stuff that makes his career even more legendary.

He’s one of just five players with 400 homers and 300 steals, and the only one who was a switch hitter. Those steals came at an 86.4% success rate, the lowest caught stealing rate for any player with 300 swipes. He had a great batting eye, giving him a .350 OBP and a 119 adjusted OPS+, meaning he was basically a center fielder who could hit like a first baseman. 


And of course, all of that offense came with a stellar glove. Beltrán only won three Gold Gloves over his career, but that was as much the result of his competition in center field (his co-inductee being one major factor) as his own prowess. Total Zone Rating has him as the seventh-best center fielder going all the way back to 1953, saving over 100 runs with his glove, and most modern metrics rate him pretty highly as well. Combining that glove at an up-the-middle position with his offense makes a pretty clear case for his place in Cooperstown.

Despite all the value he provided from every tool in the game, it still took Carlos four ballots to get in. Some of that is blowback from his place on the 2017 Astros (Beltrán definitely took the majority of the blowback for their sign stealing), but I’m not sure how much of the delay is due to that alone. He was also frequently overlooked during his playing days thanks to how evenly split his case was between his batting, fielding, position, and baserunning. I had always figured he was going to take two or three chances anyway? So it maybe added a one or two year delay?

Either way, it was a relatively quick trip from his 46.5% debut to here. If there are any other members of the 2017 Astros with Hall chances that you’re starting to wonder about (mostly Jose Altuve right now; maybe Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman in the longer term?), I’d say “possible one- or two-year delay” is the expectation right now, rather than the unofficial two-thirds limit that steroid players run into.

The same can’t be said for Andruw Jones. 2026 was his ninth ballot, and it was a long trip to 78.4% from the 7.3% he debuted at years ago. In fact, that’s the lowest ballot debut ever for a player who was still inducted by the BBWAA before aging off. And given that falling below 5% of the vote gets you booted off the thing entirely, it’ll be hard to see anyone topping that just from practical standpoint (not to mention the improbability of seeing another ballot clog like what we got from 2013 to 2020 on top of that).

Lowest debut vote pct, eventually elected by BBWAA, since return to annual voting in 1966: 2018 Andruw Jones: 7.3% 2018 Scott Rolen: 10.2% 2016 Billy Wagner: 10.5% 2019 Todd Helton: 16.5% 1970 Duke Snider: 17.0% 1998 Bert Blyleven: 17.5%

— Sarah Langs (@slangsonsports.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 3:53 PM

Like Beltrán, Jones’s case is as a multi-faceted center fielder. Carlos was a little better all around, leading to his edge in most value stats (70.0 to 62.7 in Baseball-Reference WAR, 67.4 to 67.0 in Fangraphs WAR), but the things Andruw could do well, he could really do well. His 434 home runs (just one behind Beltrán) are fifth most for a center fielder ever, and while he couldn’t quite match Beltrán in batting for average*, getting on base, or baserunning, his defense closed the gap between them significantly.

*In fact, Jones is the first position player selected by the BBWAA to not reach 2000 career hits since Ralph Kiner way back in 1975. It’s also something that we had already been seeing the Veterans Committee wavering on over the last few years, meaning that it’s looking a lot more like a trend rather than a one-off occurrence.

But just about any metric we have, Andruw Jones is one of the best fielders of all-time, center field or otherwise. He’s one of just seventeen players with 10 or more Gold Glove Awards. Total Zone has him second all-time in fielding runs saved. Most defensive stats you can find rate him as the best center fielder of all-time, and one of the ten best ever across positions. Over 400 home runs on top of that is just stellar, even if he wasn’t matching Beltrán’s average or OBP.

Jones’s rather abrupt and relatively young end to his career (his post-30 numbers are rather abysmal overall, really from the moment he left the Braves) probably soured some voters on his case initially, but his young debut (including multiple home runs as a 19 year old in the 1996 World Series*) meant that his overall career numbers aren’t really lacking. It’s also hard to determine how much initial hesitance came from the absolutely stacked ballot he debuted on in 2018 (including 4 Hall of Famers selected that year, another eight who have made it in since including Andruw himself, a large chunk of the controversial PED block, plus a handful of other notable cases). I’ve also seen some people citing his 2012 domestic violence charges here, and while I wouldn’t blame anyone for not voting for him over that, given the Hall’s… general indifference on that matter over the years (to put it mildly), I’m not sure if it was the primary factor slowing his candidacy over the years, rather than relative indifference to his defensive output.

*Incidentally, I believe this makes him the eighth Hall of Famer from the 1990s Braves dynasty, after Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper Jones, Fred McGriff, manager Bobby Cox, and executive John Schuerholz.

The ceremony for those two, plus Veterans Committee selection Jeff Kent, will be in Cooperstown on July 26th. However, both Beltrán and Jones will be busy before then managing in the World Baseball Classic this spring, with Beltrán representing Puerto Rico and Jones heading the Netherlands. And on that note, this makes Beltran the sixth Puerto Rican player in Cooperstown; Jones, meanwhile, is the second Dutch player inducted (after Bert Blyleven), and the first from the Dutch Caribbean islands (Curaçao, in this case).

Puerto Rican Hall of Famers: Roberto Alomar Carlos Beltrán Orlando Cepeda Roberto Clemente Iván Rodríguez Edgar Martínez

— Sarah Langs (@slangsonsports.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 3:41 PM

With all of that covered, we can now move on to the other half of today’s news: everything that happened on the ballot behind them! It was actually historic in a lot of ways beyond just the pair of inductees, and we can start to make a lot of predictions for the next few elections based off of that.

The distinction of first runner up this year goes to second baseman Chase Utley, who finished at 59.1% of the vote. It marks a strong third-year showing for the long-time Phillie, debuting at 28.8% in 2024 and rising to 39.8% last year.

We had a pretty good idea beforehand that this would be a good year for Chase; the early returns in Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker project were strong, and he finished at 69.0% across 245 ballots prior to the announcement itself. It was always clear that he would never finish that high, as there’s almost always some falloff between that and the final result due to the private voters being a little stingier with the vote.

But on the whole, it’s difficult to be pessimistic about Utley’s candidacy moving forward. Even after that ten-point drop, it’s still a big enough improvement to register as the 16th largest one-year jump in modern Hall of Fame voting. He could very well be standing on the stage as soon as 2027. A 16-point jump in one year isn’t easy, but it’s still smaller than what he managed this year, not to mention only slightly bigger than the one Beltrán pulled off this time. Also working in his favor is that the 2027 Ballot is looking like another light one, but we’ll revisit that in a minute. Of course, he doesn’t actually need to do it all in one go, since he’ll be on the ballot until 2033 at least.

Fixed Félix Year 0 percent here (accidentally re-typed Pettitte's Year 0 number there).

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— Ryan Thibodaux (@notmrtibbs.com) January 20, 2026 at 4:24 PM

The next two guys actually finished even better than Utley on that “One-Year Gain” leaderboard: Andy Pettitte finished with 48.5% of the vote (an increase of over 20 points), while Félix Hernández landed just behind him at 46.1%. In fact, King Félix’s 25.56% leap represents the single biggest increase in modern Hall voting.

You can’t really count on a guy to pull that off twice in a row, although as I said earlier, next year’s ballot is weak, so Hernández may shock us again. Of course, with eight more years of eligibility to his name, he doesn’t really need to pull it off again. Three more years of steady climbing gets him to 75%, too.

Pettitte doesn’t really have that leeway, given that next year is his penultimate ballot, but then again, his HGH usage meant that he was always going to be an unlikely Hall of Famer until something changes. We’ll wait and see if he can make it past the 66% mark that has so far served as an unofficial ceiling for PED guys first before speculating beyond that.

With the final numbers in, it seems like Hall of Fame voters are in fact rethinking what makes a Hall of Fame starting pitcher, which was a trend that I discussed in my preview piece (and that, in turn, was a continuation of a discussion that I started with my “Rethinking Hall of Fame Starters” Series from back in 2024). It’s also interesting to note that Pettitte and Hernández’s drops were even smaller than Utley’s; the private voters are even more closely aligned with the voters revealing their votes early here, which is actually not something that I expected!

After them, we have another pair of PED guys in Álex Rodríguez and Manny Ramirez, who finished at 40% and 38.8% respectively. It’s a career high for both, but not by much. A-Rod is still only about 6% higher than where he started on the ballot back in 2022, which makes the climb he needs in his final five elections look rather daunting. And this was Manny’s tenth and final go. He won’t be back next year, and instead becomes the concern of the Veterans Committee (who has not been terribly welcoming of players in his situation, so far). Overall, steroids seem to be the one issue that actually, regularly and unambiguously registers as a character clause issue for a significant number of Hall voters.

But after them, we have a string of Phillies all clustered together to round out the top ten. Bobby Abreu landed at 30.8%, Jimmy Rollins was next at 25.4%, and ballot newcomer Cole Hamels was right on his heels at 23.8%. The Abreu news is good to see; I’ve long held that he’s underrated by voters, and actually has a pretty good case on the merits. Few players could get on base like he could, and he had sneaky-good average, power, speed, and defense on top of that. He wasn’t as good all-around as Beltrán, but he was of a similar mold at least.

Coming onto the ballot at the tail end of that 2013 to 2019 logjam was tough on his initial numbers, but he did grit out a 5.5% on that first ballot to stick around. After six votes, his support had grown to almost 20%, which is a solid total. But as I said in this year’s preview, I think 2026 was the first ballot that he’s been on that would qualify as “not crowded”, leading to this ten-point jump and his best results yet.

30% is a respectable total in and of itself, but the other details here make me think we might be seeing big things here going forward. With the elections of Beltrán and Jones and the aging off of Manny, Abreu is now the unquestioned best outfielder on the ballot. And with another relatively weak ballot next year, he could string together a couple of big years in a row and really set himself up for a big finish. Being at 30% with only three more elections to go is by no means a sure thing, but it is about 10 points ahead of where Larry Walker was at the same point in his Hall candidacy, so it’s not even like it would be unprecedented among right fielders. It’s probably still less than a 50-50 chance that he’ll make it in… but I will certainly be watching Bobby’s early returns in the 2027 election, at least.

Cole Hamels was our only first-ballot candidate who hit the 5% needed to stick around, and I find his results encouraging. 23.8% may not seem great, but that’s slightly ahead of where Félix Hernández started things off last year, and look at where he is now. I don’t think it’s a guarantee that every pitcher will see that kind of jump going forward, but Hamels and Hernández have surprisingly close numbers, and I think seeing them side-by-side as Félix builds momentum will be a factor that could definitely get voters to flip in Hamels’ favor.

Query Results Table

Rk	Player	WAR	W	From	To	Age	W	L	W-L%	Dec	ERA	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	BK	WP	BF	ERA+	FIP	WHIP	H9	HR9	BB9	SO9	SO/BB	WAR	WAA	Pos	Team
1	Cole Hamels	57.9	163	2006	2020	22-36	163	122	.572	285	3.43	423	422	17	7	0	2698.0	2424	1103	1027	310	767	43	2560	100	14	57	11115	123	3.68	1.183	8.1	1.0	2.6	8.5	3.34	57.9	35.9	1/H	ATL,CHC,PHI,TEX
2	Félix Hernández	49.9	169	2005	2019	19-33	169	136	.554	305	3.42	419	418	25	11	0	2729.2	2487	1157	1037	264	805	16	2524	105	7	156	11284	117	3.52	1.206	8.2	0.9	2.7	8.3	3.14	49.9	24.5	1	SEA

Provided by Stathead: Found with Stathead. See Full Results.
Generated 1/8/2026.

In contrast, I don’t know what to make of Rollins’s 25.4%. Admittedly, part of that is that I’ve never really been as solid on his case as some other players, but given that I’m a big Hall guy, that might be a bad sign for his potential audience too. Given that this is only Rollins’ fifth ballot, he certainly has the time needed, if I’m talking up Abreu’s chances with even fewer times remaining. But on the other hand, the two of them were very close last year, and Abreu saw nearly twice as big a pick-up this year. That means something, I think. Again, I suppose we just have to wait and see how the early returns look next year, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the gap between Abreu and Rollins’s totals continues to grow.

Dustin Pedroia and Mark Buehrle round out the players to finish at or above 20%, getting 20.7% and 20%, respectively. Both are roughly 9-point improvements over last year. Buerhle seems like he could be another beneficiary of modern starting pitchers getting re-evaluated, but there’s not much time left given that this was already his sixth election and he’s still starting behind at least three other starting pitchers. Maybe a strong finish sets him up well for the Veterans Committee, at least?

Pedroia, meanwhile, is only on his second ballot. Like with Rollins, I’m not sure I feel super strongly about his case, but a 9-point jump in year two that almost doubles his starting vote feels significant. We’ll see if it builds to anything, but he certainly has plenty of time left to do so. Maybe he’ll stagnate as we start to see stronger candidates return to the ballot, but he’s got a few years to make a headstart there.

Four more candidates fell between the 20% mark and the 5% necessary to return next year. Omar Vizquel is back around 18.4% with only one more chance on the ballot left, so he seems toast. David Wright seems to be in the same category as Jimmy Rollins and Dustin Pedroia, hitting 14.8% in year three; he’s got time, but he doesn’t seem to be building momentum as quickly as Pedroia is. Francisco Rodríguez crawled from 10.2% to 11.8% as he closes out the first half of his ten years on the ballot. And Torii Hunter reached 8.7% to secure his place in the next election, but after six tries, he’s still yet to manage the 9.5% he saw back in his first try. Wright seems like the only one from this group that might be worth revisiting in the next few cycles, and even that is kind of a longshot.

If we try to match all that up to a calendar, what does it look like? Well, the 2027 BBWAA ballot is looking like another relatively open one. Buster Posey is the headlining newcomer; I could see him going in first ballot like Joe Mauer did a few years ago, but given his shorter career and the voters’ general hesitance on catchers (only three have ever gone in first-ballot: Johnny Bench, Iván Rodríguez, and Mauer), I also wouldn’t be shocked if he finishes in the 60-75% range and needs to come back for a second try. Watch the early ballots to get a better feel for which side of the line he falls on.

Outside of him, I think we can now count on Jon Lester sticking around too, given that voters seem more open to voting for pitchers. At the very least, I don’t see a world where Hamels and Hernández can debut at 20% while Lester falls below 5%. Everyone else (Ryan Zimmerman? Brett Gardner? Kyle Seager?) seems destined to go one-and-done.

Given the two spots opening at the top plus ManRam aging off, there could be a lot of freed up slots to go around. That makes me optimistic about a strong Buster Posey debut, plus I can see Utley and King Félix benefitting a lot given that getting 50 and 60% of the vote tends to trigger a lot of voters to flip from “No” to “Yes”. Hernández is probably too far away to get inducted next year, but I could see one or both of Posey and Utley going in. This would also be a great opportunity for someone like Abreu or Hamels to make a big jump too (maybe Pettitte, but again, that HGH usage probably hard-caps him at 66% or lower).

2028 will be where things start to tighten up again. Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina debut on the ballot; Pujols is a definite first-ballot choice, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Molina goes in with him given his reputation as a defensive wizard behind the plate. I also expect David Price and even Robinson Canó will hit the 5% necessary to stick around (although they might not get much more than that). This might be the year Félix gets over the line, although it would be tough if one of Chase or Buster misses in 2027; they’d probably take priority over him, and a four-person class is pretty uncommon.

And 2029 will be a tough year, with all of Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, Zack Greinke, and Evan Longoria debuting on the ballot. If you take an expansive view of starting pitching, you could probably throw Corey Kluber, Adam Wainwright, and Madison Bumgarner into consideration as well, although all of them seem a step below the Hamels/Hernández/Buehrle tier of pitchers (not to mention that Greinke pretty clearly beats all of them). This will also be Bobby Abreu’s final ballot, which is why the next two elections will be critical for him; he’s going to have to make up most of the difference before these guys crowd him out at the top of the ballot. If he’s not tracking in the 40-50% range among early voters next year, the math starts to look really rough for him.

The big increases we see this year and the clear re-evaluation of starting pitchers, plus the induction of both Beltrán and Jones, feels like it introduces a lot more uncertainty here than we’ve seen in years past. As a longtime Hall watcher, I’ll definitely be watching the early ballots with keen interest next winter. And as for the two newest inductees, even before their induction ceremony, it’ll be exciting to see how they do at the World Baseball Classic, which is just a month and a half away! 

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