As of Monday night, Beltrán had been elected on 89.2% of the 223 early-revealed ballots tabulated on Ryan Thibodaux’s online vote tracker, just over half of the estimated total submitted. Jones was at 83%, as was Beltran, well above the 75% needed for sanctuary induction in Cooperstown, New York.
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In his fourth appearance at the polls, Beltrán has steadily risen from 46.5% in 2023 to 57.1% the following year and to 70.3% in 2025, when he fell 19 votes short of electing Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner.
Jones is on the ballot for the ninth of as many as 10 times. It received only 7.3% in its first appearance in 2018; his 31 votes were just over the 22 needed to remain eligible for future BBWAA votes. He did not obtain half of the total until he obtained 58.1% in 2023, then increased to 61.6% and 66.2%, leaving 35 votes less in 2025.
Anyone chosen would be inducted on July 26 along with Jeff Kent, voted out last month by the contemporary era committee after receiving a peak of 46.5% of BBWAA votes between 2014 and 2023.
BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years in the organization were eligible to vote.
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The Beltrán case
A nine-time All-Star, Beltrán hit .279 with 435 home runs and 1,587 RBIs in 20 seasons with Kansas City (1999-2004), Houston (2004, ’17), the New York Mets (2005-11), San Francisco (2011), St. Louis (2012-13), the New York Yankees (20014-16) and Texas. (2016).
He was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1999 and won three Gold Gloves, and also hit .307 in the postseason with 16 home runs and 42 RBIs in 65 games.
Beltrán was hired as Mets manager on Nov. 1, 2019, then fired on Jan. 16 without managing a game, three days after he was the only Astros player mentioned by name in a Major League Baseball report into the team’s illicit use of electronic devices to steal signs during Houston’s run to the 2017 World Series championship.
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“We all did what we did. Looking back today, we were wrong,” Beltrán said on a YES Network broadcast in 2022, after being hired as an analyst. “I wish I had asked more questions about what we were doing. I wish the organization had told us, ‘Hey, what you’re doing, we have to stop this.'”
The Jones case
Jones hit .254 with 434 home runs, 1,289 RBIs and 152 stolen bases in 17 seasons with Atlanta (1996-2007), Los Angeles Dodgers (2008), Texas (2009), Chicago White Sox (2010) and Yankees (2011-12). He finished his career with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of the Japan Pacific League from 2013 to 2014.
His batting average would be the second-lowest for a Hall of Fame position player, just above the .253 of Ray Schalk, a top defensive catcher, and just below the .256 of Harmon Killebrew, who hit 573 home runs.
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Jones, a five-time All-Star, won 10 Gold Gloves.
In the first game of the 1996 World Series at Yankee Stadium, at 19 years and 5 months, Jones became the youngest player to hit a home run in a Series game, surpassing Mickey Mantle’s old mark by 18 months. By going deep against Andy Pettitte in the second inning and Brian Boehringer in the third of a 12-1 rout, Jones became the second player to hit a home run in his first two at-bats of the Series after Gene Tenace in 1972.
seems to fall short
Chase Utley (68.2%), Pettitte (57.4%) and Félix Hernández (56.5%) were the only other candidates to earn at least half of the votes revealed on the tracker before the announcement.
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Utley was on the ballot for the third time after earning 28.8% and then 39.8% last year, and Hernandez received 20.6% last year in his first appearance on the ballot.
Pettitte, on the ballot for the eighth time, has made substantial progress. It earned 9% in its initial appearance in 2019, 13.5% in 2024 and 27.9% last year.
Cole Hamels, with 31.4%, had the highest total among a dozen newcomers to the 27-candidate ballot.
Alex Rodríguez (43% in the fifth appearance) and Manny Ramírez (40.4% in the tenth appearance) are very shy. Both served suspensions for performance-enhancing drug violations.
Looking forward
Buster Posey and Jon Lester are the first-time front-runners on the 2027 BBWAA ballot, followed by Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina in 2028, and Miguel Cabrera, Zack Greinke and Joey Votto in 2029.
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