ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Tuesday will mark the one of the more important dates of the world of baseball as the sport will find out who will join baseball's greats in Cooperstown, New York.
The Baseball Hall of Fame will already honor former Florida Marlins and Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland in July, but which players will join him for the induction ceremony in July and who is gaining good ground in this year's ballot to potentially set their path for induction in the future?
IS A FOUR-PERSON CLASS POSSIBLE?
As of Tuesday morning, it looks like at worst the 2024 Hall of Fame Class will be a two-person class. Former Texas Rangers legendary 3B Adrian Beltre is all but guaranteed to get a phone call from Cooperstown on his induction Tuesday while former AL MVP and longtime Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer will also be likely to get the call too.
According to Ballot Tracker by Ryan Thibodaux, with over half the ballots revealed by the BBWAA writers eligible to vote for the HOF, five players are within or over the 75% range for induction - Beltre, Mauer, Billy Wagner, Todd Helton, and Gary Sheffield. Wagner and Helton still have at least a year left while Sheffield in his final year of eligibility on the ballot.
Helton case is rather interesting. He's had a very respectable career, with five All-Stars appearances, three Gold Gloves, four Silver Sluggers and a Batting Title. While there's a knock for the fact that Helton played his entire career at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado, His case for Cooperstown seems Hall of Very Good until you take a look at the advanced metrics like Wins Above Replacement (WAR), JAWS, and Seven-year peak WAR showed that he might not be Lou Gehrig or Albert Pujols, but his numbers are on par with the likes of Hall of Famers Willie McCovey and Eddie Murray, better than the likes of Harmon Killebrew and just slightly under the resumes of future Hall of Famers Joey Votto and Miguel Cabrera.
Helton missed induction last year by just 11 votes and while he's currently at 82.1%, there's a good chance he joins Mauer and Beltre in Cooperstown in July.
Wagner's case is rather more complex. Relief pitchers have had a very tough for Hall of Fame voters to quantify but many have seem to understand how good Wagner was in his playing days. While he wasn't Mariano Rivera elite, he was still one of the most dominant relievers of his time. There a outside chance he could join Mauer, Beltre, and likely Helton for induction in July, but with another year left for him on the ballot, the likeliest possibility for him is to go the full 10 years to get the call for induction.
Sheffield case is more murkier than the other four. While he does have the analytics and normal numbers than come are in his favor, his history with steroids has put a murkier picture on his Hall of Fame chances, even though he has vehemently denied he knew the infamous cream he used contained steroids.
Sheffield in his last year of eligibility for the writers to vote him in. While he seen some momentum already from the public ballots that have been revealed with Sheffield just receiving slightly under 75% at the moment and flipping 16 voters. But Sheffield missed induction last year by 78, and if he still had another year or two left, there's a good shot he does make it in. But needing 78 flips could prove an impossible task for Sheffield in his final year where it looks likely he will barely miss it and have to wait for the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee to vote him into Cooperstown in December 2026 at the earliest.
WHO SETTING A PATH FOR INDUCTION IN THE FUTURE?
A few players have seen some support grow for them over the last few years on the ballot where Hall of Fame induction seems like a good bet for them in the future.
Wagner might fall just a bit short of induction in his ninth year on the ballot, but if he doesn't get the call Tuesday, and with Wagner only 27 votes away from 75%, good chance Wagner will be one of the names on the stage of Cooperstown in 2025.
Former St. Louis Cardinals, New York Mets and Kansas City Royals outfielder Carlos Beltran has seen the largest momentum increase this ballot season, with 27 different voters who didn't vote for him last year flipping and checking off his name on the ballot. While every baseball fans knows he was the only player to be named during the Astros cheating scandal investigation and seen as the face of the operation, there's no denying that Beltran career before that was Hall of Fame caliber.
According to Baseball-Reference, his JAWS, a metric developed by sabermetrician Jay Jaffe to measure a player's Hall of Fame worthiness, is the ninth-highest of all-time among centerfielders. Everyone ahead of him is in the Hall of Fame.
Additionally, his similarity scores as a hitter compare favorably to Andre Dawson, Billy Williams and Al Kaline, all Hall of Famers.
With Beltran racking up just slightly over two-thirds of the ballots so far, a Hall of Fame induction for the former Cardinals outfielder looks likely on the horizon.
Atlanta Braves legend Andruw Jones has seen considerable support over the past few years. After barely surviving to stay on the ballot in his first year in 2018, receiving 18 votes, Jones has only gone up from there, with 70% of public voters putting his name on the ballot. Since Jones is only in his seventh year, he has plenty of time to flip 66 voters to vote for him for induction and it seems an Hall of Fame call for him is within reach of the next two years.
Among non-Beltre and Mauer first-year candidates, longtime Phillies 2B Chase Utley has seen decent support in his first year of induction, racking more voters than the like of current ballot mainstays like Mark Buerhrle, Bobby Abreu and Torri Hunter, along with getting more votes than three-time AL MVP and multiple-time steroid user Alex Rodriguez, who is in his third year on the ballot.
WHO'S COMING ON THE 2025 BALLOT AND FUTURE BALLOTS?
While future ballots won't be as necessarily crowded as it was in the 2010s, where players that were Hall-of-Fame worthy like outfielder Jim Edmonds and Kenny Lofton were dropped off entirely in their first years due to how crowded those ballots were.
The 2025 first-year eligibles' will have a lot of candidates, including Ichiro, who will be a first-ballot induction most likely, former Yankees ace CC Sabathia will get considerable support and more interesting Hall of Fame cases like Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, and Felix Hernandez.
The 2026 and 2027 ballots don't have a ton of viable candidates save for Giants C Buster Posey, longtime Phillies ace Cole Hamels, and maybe Red Sox, Cubs and Cardinals starter Jon Lester, but the 2028 ballot will have two viable candidates enter the fray in former Cardinals Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols.
The Hall of Fame announcement will at 5 p.m. central time and it will be broadcast on both MLB Network and on MLB.com's website.