The Hall of Fame released their ballot for the 2026 class last week and, as usual, it’s time for everyone to start firing off their takes. I figured I’d go ahead and be one of the first. Just in case you
missed it, you can read all about the candidates, including first-timer Alex Gordon, here.
First, let’s go over my process a little bit. I’m a Big Hall person, so I will immediately plan to vote for the maximum 10 players on my ballot. That still means I can’t vote for everyone, so let’s start taking some guys off the list.
If you didn’t get at least 40 career fWAR, I’m not going to seriously consider you. So that eliminates Daniel Murphy, Matt Kemp, Nick Markakis, Hunter Pence, Howie Kendrick, Alex Gordon (sorry, Lo, Danger Ox!), Edwin Encarnacíon, and Shin-Soo Choo on the hitting side. It also eliminates Francisco Rodríguez, Gio Gonzalez, and Rick Porcello on the pitching side. I’d have made an exception for K-Rod if he’d had some otherwise impressive numbers, but they’re good more than great.
That still leaves me with four pitchers and nine hitters. I’ve got to take at least three of them off, and even as a Big Haller, I don’t want to vote for someone I don’t think has a real case. So let’s go ahead and consider those cases a bit more closely.
I’ll go ahead and write off Ryan Braun. I don’t automatically discount guys who are known or suspected PED users, but he was an absolute a-hole to someone just doing his job, and whether he would otherwise deserve to be in the Hall, I ain’t gonna vote for him. That knocks me down to 12.
Alex Rodriguez is a guy many people still have problems with, but again, PEDs don’t bother me. We’ve been over this many times, but the two primary questions to be answered in my mind are, “Would I kick out Mickey Mantle for his use of PEDs?” and “Do I think the player likely would have been a Hall of Fame talent if he hadn’t done PEDs?” The answer to the first question is always no. The answer to the second question, in A-Rod’s case, is a resounding yes. He’s the only player on this list to top 100 career fWAR. He’s fifth on the all-time home run list. We could go on and on about his career accolades, but no one would ever suggest there is any reason he shouldn’t be in the hall other than steroids. MLB players have taken whatever edges they could get since the beginning of the game. Hell, the whole reason the sport looks the way it does today is because early pitchers refused to play by the rules, which required them to throw the ball where the batter wanted it. Known spitballers and users of greenies have been inducted. A-Rod gets my vote.
Carlos Beltrán gets a lot of flak for another kind of cheating. The kind that involves banging on trash cans. I’ve never been able to get much worked up over that, and, interestingly, he hasn’t taken as much heat from voters for it as the steroid users. Perhaps he would have been a first-ballot guy if he hadn’t participated in the 2017 Astros shenanigans, but most people think he’ll be elected this year, anyway. That said, he also gets my vote.
Andruw Jones is a guy who has been on the ballot for a long time. A tremendous player for some of those dominant ’90s-’00s Atlanta teams, who was vastly underrated in his prime and has only recently come to be seen as the star he was. As noted above, many people believe Beltrán was a first-ballot guy, but Andruw Jones’ numbers are extremely similar in a lot of ways. Andruw stole half the bases Beltran did, but that’s not enough to keep him out of the Hall for me when everything else is so similar. Add one more to my ballot.
Manny Ramirez is in for a lot of the same reasons A-Rod is. No, his career wasn’t quite as impressive, but I distinctly remember a time when every Royals fan felt that their manager should have had Chad Durbin intentionally walk him when the bases were loaded rather than allow the seemingly inevitable Grand Slam that occurred instead. Everyone knew Manny was gonna hit it. Manny B Manny always hit the dang ball. His 555 career home runs put him at 15th on the All-Time MLB list, and 10 of the next 11 guys after him are in. The only one who isn’t is Miguel Cabrera, who seems destined to be in on his first ballot.
Bobby Abreu is such a divisive case. I think if he’d managed 12 more home runs, getting him to 300, he’d already be in as a 300 HR-400 SB guy. I also wonder if he’d be in if he’d been able to stick with a single team in his career instead of playing for six of them. I could see leaving him off of a more stacked ballot, but that doesn’t describe this one, so he gets my vote.
Jimmy Rollins is a guy I expected to vote for easily, but then I looked at his numbers a bit closer. He didn’t manage 250 home runs, and his career OPS is below .750. His career wRC+ is 95! He could run, but 470 stolen bases isn’t impressive enough in the context of MLB’s stolen base history to get me all that excited without more to add to it. I have to leave him off my ballot.
Dustin Pedroia is a guy I expected to leave off and, yeah, I have to. The career longevity just wasn’t there. Every other position player on this list has at least 2000 games played, with many over 2500. He only has 1512. You could argue that the fact that he was so valuable in so little playing time means something, but the numbers just aren’t eye-popping enough for me to send him on.
Torii Hunter only just barely cleared the first cut with a career fWAR of 42.9. He played for a good long time and was very, very good. But he also ended his career with a 110 wRC+ and only 353 home runs and 195 stolen bases as an outfielder. We’re wondering if 350 home runs would be enough to get a catcher like Salvador Perez in. It’s not enough and he didn’t do enough of anything else for me to vote for him as an outfielder.
Andy Pettitte is the first of the pitchers I’m looking at and, for the life of me, I’m not sure how he isn’t already in. His years and years of excellence in the regular season and postseason for the Yankees and Astros seems like it should be enough. He doesn’t have the gaudy strikeout numbers of a more modern pitcher, nor does he have the shiny ERA of some of his compatriots, but the guy was a winner. He also did it for a very long time and pitched so, so many innings. I have to vote for him.
Félix Hernández is the King! He pitched in the fewest games of the four pitchers I’m considering, but still came in firmly second in fWAR. Had he pitched for some better Mariners teams, I think he’d have already been elected, but we never got to see him in the postseason. That’s not his fault, though. I can see why others might not vote for him, but I’m doing it anyway.
Mark Buehrle is someone I really, really want in the Hall. I can’t explain why. Especially because when I look at his numbers, they don’t do anything for me. Ask me again tomorrow, and I might change my mind, but I’m going to pass on voting for him today.
Cole Hamels pitched the fewest innings of all four pitchers and also had the lowest fWAR. He has the best strikeout rate and trails Félix’s best ERA by one one-hundredth of a run. But he threw fewer innings in more games. Eh, what the heck, he’s close enough. I’ll vote for him.
So that leaves my ballot with these selections:
- Alex Rodriguez
- Carlos Beltrán
- Andruw Jones
- Bobby Abreu
- Andy Pettitte
- Félix Hernández
- Cole Hamels
- Alex Gordon*
When people tell you this is a weak ballot, they aren’t kidding. Even I, as a Big Hall proponent, could only find seven players I wanted to elect on this one. I added Alex Gordon because if I’m not planning to vote for anyone else in that spot, I figured I might as well throw him a vote for fun. If I had to add two more guys, I think it would be Buehrle and Pedroia, because I just never liked Hunter very much. But maybe I’d pick Rollins over Pedroia just because I enjoyed watching him more.
Who would you all be voting for?
Bonus: the Contemporary Era Ballot
Every year, the Hall of Fame has an era committee vote to give some second chances to guys who missed out early on. Last year, this saw Dave Parker and Dick Allen selected by the Classic Era committee to right a couple of wrongs for some truly terrific players who had previously missed out. This year it’s the Contemporary Era’s turn (Classic deals with players before 1980, Contemporary is guys after.) Here are the players they’ll be considering:
Voters can only select up to three guys. So here are the three I’m going with.
Barry Bonds gets my vote for all the reasons A-Rod did and then some. Bonds might have been the best pure hitter the sport has ever seen. If you need to know more about how remarkably good he was, check out this video by Jon Bois:
Gary Sheffield. Remember earlier when I noted that 10 of the 11 guys following Manny Ramirez on the all-time home run leaderboard were Hall of Famers? Gary was the 12th. Eight of the nine after Gary are in. The guy was a force at the plate.
Fernando Valenzuela is my final vote. Maybe Carlos Delgado has a better statistical case, but Fernandomania completely altered the course of Major League Baseball, and the guy who made that happen deserves to be recognized in a similar way to how Buck O’Neill deserved to be recognized beyond his play on the field.
Naturally, we will not see a Hall of Fame class of 11 guys in 2026. Setting aside who you would and wouldn’t vote for, does anyone have any estimates for how many new players we’ll see? I’d put the over-under at 3.5, personally.
