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. 

Built with Kit

*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. 

Jimmy Wynn Might Be the Most Overlooked Player In Hall of Fame History, and He Deserves Second Look

Once again, this Hall of Fame piece is also up over at The Crawfish Boxes!

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Next week at the Winter Meetings, in addition to any trades or free agent signings, the sixteen players, executives, and historians representing the Veterans Committee will convene and make their selections for the Class of 2020. I've already written about the people on the ballot, as well as the people doing the voting, and there's not much to add there; we'll probably see one player receive the twelve votes needed to reach 75% and merit induction, with the possibility of a second remaining. If you're curious who's most likely, that's all in those two articles.

I'd like to go in a different direction today, though, and focus on a player who's not on the ballot this year. In fact, he's never appeared on any Veterans Committee ballot, despite being eligible for it for over twenty years now, probably in part because he picked up no votes in his lone appearance on the BBWAA ballot. That decision was a glaring oversight at the time, and it's only become a bigger one following the advancements we've seen in player evaluations since his career ended in 1977.

I'm talking, of course, about early Astros star center fielder Jimmy Wynn. Initially drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in 1962, Wynn was taken that winter by the then-Colt .45s in the first-year player draft and made his major league debut the following year at the age of 21, beginning his eleven-year tenure in Houston. He also earned the nickname "The Toy Cannon" along the way, starting the Astros' tradition of under-sized stars (although Wynn was 5' 10", his power wound up being the thing that surprised people).

When he was finally traded to the Dodgers in December 1973, he was the franchise leader in most counting stats, including homers (223, no one else had even 100), hits (1291, no one else had managed 950), and 719 RBI (nearly 250 ahead of second place). He would eventually lose most of those titles, but some of them took a while (notably, he had the home run title until Jeff Bagwell finally passed him in 1999), and his name is still all over the franchise leader boards.

His fifteen season career ended with some pretty decent stats, although it's not difficult to see why voters didn't keep him on the ballot: 1665 hits, 291 homers, 964 RBI, 225 stolen bases, and a .250 batting average. Why, then, did his profile rise in the years since his retirement, with high profile fans like Bill James advocating him for Cooperstown? James even went as far as to call him one of the ten-best center fielders of all-time in his Historical Abstracts, and although that's a designation that has almost certainly changed over the years, James also had Wynn as one of the most underrated players of the 1960s. What did the Cooperstown voters miss in his case, and why does he deserve a look from the Veterans Committee.

Basically, every change in the understanding of baseball statistics has swung in Wynn's favor. Appreciation for reaching base highlighted Jim's incredible batting eye, with 1224 walks bringing his career OBP up to an impressive .366.

Understanding of offensive contexts was another big development. As it turned out, playing in the 1960s, the worst offensive context since the deadball era, and having your home games in a pitcher's park like the Astrodome will do a number on your superficial stats. Things like OPS+, which control for that context, showed that Jimmy was actually well above the rest of his peers. OPS+ puts him at 129, while wRC+ has him slightly better at 130.

There was the greater understanding of positional context. Fans had long known that some positions were more difficult to play than others, but it mostly reserved for the extremes rather than the finer differences. But, for instance, it mattered that The Toy Cannon was a center fielder, and not just a general outfielder, and it actually mattered a lot; people began to appreciate things like that.

For instance, on it’s own, his 129 OPS+ may not have stood out all that much, but compared just to other center fielders? That ties him for 20th all-time (at a position where there are still only 19 Hall of Famers), and looks even better when you realize that two of the players ahead of him are still active, and another two played less than 1000 games in their career. Put another way, the center fielders who hit better than Wynn while accruing more plate appearances is short and impressive: Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Ken Griffey, Jr.

And of course, tying together all of that brings us to WAR, and its various spinoffs, like Wins Above Average or the more Hall-centric spinoffs like JAWS and Hall Rating (both of which take into account a player’s peak and career values). All of those were meant to quantify those underappreciated aspects and give them the same type of attention that home runs or RBI got, and it turns out, that helps out Wynn a lot! Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR puts Jim at eighteenth all-time for center fielders, at 55.9.

And the other methods like him even more: since Wynn’s career was rather brief (fifteen seasons, just twelve with more than 100 games played), he had a pretty high peak to be able to reach nearly 56 Wins. Three times, Wynn reached 7.0 or more WAR, with another three above 5.0. Wins Above Average, which compares players to Average, 2-Win players rather than replacement level ones, puts him sixteenth among center fielders with 28.8 Wins. JAWS rates him seventeenth (49.6), while Hall Rating puts him fifteenth (110, or 10% better than a borderline Hall of Famer).

Maybe that wasn’t good enough for the BBWAA, seeing as their inductees in center have looked more like Ken Griffey and Joe DiMaggio. But Wynn is well past that stage, since the Veterans Committee would be selecting him, and being better than somewhere between 40 to 50% of the inductees at your position seems like it should be the type of thing to attention from a committee designed to recognize overlooked players.

Given that Jimmy Wynn’s career spanned the 1960s and ‘70s, I could see either of the Golden Days or Modern Baseball committees being responsible for discussing his candidacy. That would mean he would either be up next year (the 2021 ballot, which will be announced in November 2020) or two years after that. Hopefully, he at least attracts some attention the next time he’s up for nomination, as it would be great to see him finally get a vote for Cooperstown, at the very least. He deserves more than that, but getting his merits discussed would at least be a first step in the right direction.

Reconsidering Johnny Damon for the Hall of Fame

When I was looking over the stats for my recent Hall of Fame ballot article, an unexpected player gave me pause. I had never really considered Johnny Damon a Hall of Famer, or even particularly close. But as it turns out, it’s a lot easier for me to envision a case for him than I thought.

But first, a short diversion, because there’s a second part to this that may have changed my thinking. I also recently covered the paucity of Hall inductees at third base, particularly in comparison to the other positions. If you remember from that piece, third base (and catcher) are pretty underrepresented in Cooperstown, but there’s some other weirdness afoot as well. Center field just happens to be one of the locations of that other weirdness.

It’s not strikingly obvious though, like third base is. It’s small stuff that adds up. For example, they have the third fewest representatives in the Hall at just nineteen (third base and catcher had thirteen and fifteen, respectively), while every other position sits at 20 or more. If you use JAWS, Jay Jaffe’s system for studying Hall-worthiness across positions, center fielders have the second highest average JAWS after right field. In my article from last time, I noted that center also tied with third base for the most not-elected “second tier” players (check that earlier link for a fuller explanation). And when I measured out the number of players at each position who hit 60 and 50 WAR without making the Hall, center field had the second and third highest percentages, respectively.

On top of all of that, though, was their “middle”; when I divided inducted Hall of Famers at each position into upper, middle, and lower thirds based on WAR, the top of the “middle” third for center field was right in line with everyone else’s, at 66.5. But the lower end of that same middle third was just 49.5, closer to catchers (who see lower WAR totals due to less playing time) than any of the other positions, who sit in the mid-50s for the most part.

Fighting Tomorrow's Ignorance Now 3: Andruw Jones Is Going to Japan and Might Be Done

Andruw Jones is officially signing with the Rakuten Eagles. It seems weird to think that he’s only 35 going on 36, yet he might be done in the Major Leagues. If this is the end of his career, since it’s Hall of Fame season, it makes sense to combine the two thoughts and start looking at his Hall of Fame case.

The first thing to do would be to look at his counting numbers, since that will be the first thing most voters look at. He played parts of seventeen seasons in the majors-which is actually incredible when you combine that with the information that he’s retiring at the age of 35. He debuted in 1996 at the age of 19.

Anyway, in those seventeen seasons, he amassed 1933 hits and 434 home runs. Among players who spent a majority of their games at center field, that puts him fourth behind Willie Mays (660), Ken Griffey (630), and Mickey Mantle (434), and just ahead of Duke Snider (407) and Jim Edmonds (393). That’s a pretty solid group. However, that isn’t a totally accurate representation of his offensive output.

Carlos Beltran and the Hall of Fame

ESPN ran an interesting piece on Carlos Beltran the other day, talking about the start of his career, his return to Kansas City for the All-Star Game this year, and his chances for the Hall of Fame. Maybe this shouldn’t surprise me at this point, but after reading the comments, there seemed to be a large gulf between what Hiram Martinez thought of Beltran’s Cooperstown odds and what the readers seemed to think.

Quick Thoughts: Colby Rasmus

I am a big fan of Colby Rasmus. I know that he gets a flack, and there have been quite a few trade rumors swirling around him as of late. However, I have always thought that trading him would be a big mistake. Even if he's having issues with the manager, trading him now (with his value at its lowest) is still a big mistake. And that's assuming that the manager is more important to the team than the starting center fielder. This article over at ESPN.com only convinces me more that he's worth keeping. Even if he doesn't become a Carlos Beltran or Bernie Williams-level star, there's still likely plenty of value to be had. For example, Ellis Burks wasn't too shabby, you know.

Comparison: Ken Griffey, Jr. vs. Chipper Jones

So, ESPN has an interesting thought experiment going. Chipper Jones and Ken Griffey, Jr. are both excellent players, former number 1 picks, and future Hall of Famers. Steve Berthiaume recently posed this question over at ESPN: if you could have just one, Jones or Griffey, for their ENTIRE career (yes, injuries and all), which one would you take? I thought it sounded like an interesting prompt, and decided to read on. What I found out, though, is that it really isn’t close; I would much rather take Chipper.