The Hall of Fame ballot to be voted on by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America was released Monday, and it contains 21 players, which is quite a bit smaller than some recent Hall ballots.
New to the ballot this year are outfielders Ryan Braun and Matt Kemp, infielders Howie Kendrick and Daniel Murphy and pitchers Cole Hamels and Rick Porcello.
Hamels was acquired by the Cubs from the Rangers July 27, 2018 for Eddie Butler and two minor leaguers. He hadn’t pitched that well for Texas
that year (4.72 ERA in 20 starts), but immediately went on a good run for the Cubs, posting a 2.36 ERA in 12 starts, worth 2.3 bWAR. In 2019, Hamels missed about a month with an oblique injury, and wasn’t nearly as good after the injury (17 starts, 2.98 ERA before; 10 starts, 5.79 ERA after). That was a factor in the Cubs missing the postseason in 2019. He went to free agency after the season and signed with the Braves, but made only one start with them due to injury.
You’ll certainly remember Hamels’ no-hitter against the Cubs in 2015 that broke their MLB-record streak of 7,920 games without being no-hit.
Hamels posted 57.9 bWAR in 15 MLB seasons with 163 wins and 2,522 strikeouts. He was a four-time All-Star and finished in the top 10 of Cy Young voting four times. That’s probably not a good enough body of work to be elected to the Hall; it’ll be interesting to see if he gets many, or any, votes.
Daniel Murphy also played briefly for the Cubs in 2018, acquired from the Nationals for Andruw Monasterio, who’s now with the Brewers. Murphy, who had two great seasons for the Nats in 2016 and 2017 and had demolished the Cubs in the 2015 NLCS while with the Mets, batted .297/.329/.471 with six home runs in 35 games with the Cubs and went 0-for-4 in that year’s Wild Card Game against the Rockies before going and signing with Colorado for the final two years of his career.
Fifteen players are holdovers from last year’s ballot. Two of them, Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones, came close to induction last year, Beltrán getting 70.3 percent of the vote and Jones 66.2 percent. The other 13, in order of their vote percentage, are: Chase Utley, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Andy Pettitte, Félix Hernández, Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Omar Vizquel, Dustin Pedroia, Mark Buehrle, Francisco Rodriguez, David Wright and Torii Hunter. Ramirez is in his final year on the ballot and Jones has one more year after this one.
BBWAA ballots are due back to the Hall of Fame by Dec. 31. As always, Ryan Thibodeau is running his Hall of Fame ballot tracker, where you can follow publicly-released ballots.
The Hall of Fame will announce its 2026 class in a live MLB Network broadcast at 5 p.m. CT, Tuesday, Jan 20. Any players elected will be inducted in a ceremony in Cooperstown on Sunday, July 26.
Our new polling format allows multiple selections, so this is comparable to a BBWAA ballot. Vote for up to 10 of the 21 players listed below.
