The National Baseball Hall of Fame has announced its Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, which includes three former Mets among its eight players. Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, and Gary Sheffield are the three players who spent time with the Mets, and they’re joined by Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, and Fernando Valenzuela.
Delgado hit 473 home runs in his major league career with a .280/.383/.546 career line, and a 135 OPS+. His 39.4 JAWS ranks 38th all time among first
basemen, slightly behind Hall of Famers Frank Chance and Orlando Cepeda and slightly ahead of Hall of Famer—and inaugural Mets manager—Gil Hodges. Despite those numbers, Deglado got just 3.8 percent of the BBWAA vote in 2015, his first time appearing on a Hall of Fame ballot, and fell off it for failing to reach the 5.0-percent threshold.
Kent hit 377 home runs with a .290/.356/.500 line and a 123 OPS+, and among the three players who spent time with the Mets, his 8.4 bWAR while playing in Queens is the highest of the three. He topped out a 46.5 percent of votes in his final appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2023.
Sheffield’s stint in Queens was by far the shortest, and while he earned just 0.3 of his career 60.5 bWAR in his age-40—and final—season in 2009, he did happen to hit his 500th career home run as a member of the Mets. In his final appearance on a Hall of Fame ballot in 2024, he finished with 63.9 percent of the vote, failing to get to 75 percent and earn a spot in Cooperstown.
As for the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, it will be made up of 16 members, though the names of those members have not yet been released. To be inducted into the Hall of Fame, any of these eight players would require 75 percent of the vote. The results of the committee’s vote will be announced at 7:30 PM EST on MLB Network on December 7, the first night of the league’s winter meetings.
