The Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) announced the results of the 2024 National Baseball Hall of Fame voting, with Adrián Beltré, Joe Mauer and Todd Helton being nominated to Cooperstown.
The 2024 ballot featured 26 total candidates, including 12 newcomers. Hall of Fame candidates must be named on 75% of ballots cast in order to be inducted into Cooperstown.
Beltré, who was on the ballot for the first time, earned the most votes of the 26 candidates with 366, which accounted for 95.1% of the electorate. Helton, in his sixth year on the ballot, was named on 307 ballots (79.7%) and Mauer, like Beltré a first-time honoree, got 293 votes (76.1%).
They will be honored during Induction Weekend 2024 July 19-22 in Cooperstown, N.Y., at the July 21 Induction Ceremony on the grounds of the Clark Sports Center along with Jim Leyland.
Beltré spent 21 seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox, and Texas Rangers, finished second in the 2004 National League MVP race to Barry Bonds.
Beltré played 2,759 of his 2,933 career games at third base, second only to the 2,870 by Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson. On career lists, Beltre ranks ninth in at-bats (11,068), 11th in doubles (636), 15th in total bases (5,309), 15th in extra base hits (1,151), 18th in hits (3,166), 25th in runs batted in (1,707) and 31st in home runs (477).
Helton spent his entire 17-season career was spent with the Colorado Rockies. He won the National League batting title with a .372 average in 2000, the same year that he topped the league in hits (216), doubles (59), total bases (405) and RBI (147). He is one of only seven players in history with at least two seasons (2000 and ’01) of 400 or more total bases.
The five-time All-Star first baseman won three Gold Glove Awards and four Silver Slugger Awards. The .316 career hitter totaled 2,519 hits and had nearly the same amount of runs (1,401) as RBI (1,406) with more walks (1,335) than strikeouts (1,175).
Mauer played in 15 major-league seasons, all with the Minnesota Twins, and won American League batting titles in 2006, 2008 and 2009, the most by a catcher.
He was the AL MVP in that 2009 season when he hit .365 with career-high totals in home runs (28) and runs batted in (96) and becoming the first catcher in either league to lead the majors in on-base average plus slugging percentage (1.031).
Mauer, who spent his final five seasons primarily at first base, is the only catcher in history with at least 2.000 hits (2,123), a .300 batting average (.306) and a .380 on-base percentage (.388).
Falling just five votes short of election was relief pitcher Billy Wagner with 284 votes (73.8%) in his ninth and next-to-last year on the ballot.
The only other players to gain mention on more than half the ballots were outfielders Gary Sheffield with 246 (63.9%), Andruw Jones with 237 (61.6%) and Carlos Beltrán with 220 (57.1%).
Sheffield was in his 10th-and-final season on the BBWAA ballot. His case will revert to the BBWAA’s Historical Overview Committee in 2025, which crafts the ballots for consideration by the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee for the Class of 2026.
Candidates may remain on the BBWAA ballot for up to 10 years provided they are listed on at least five percent of ballots cast. There are 14 players from this year’s ballot who will be eligible again for 2025, including two of the 12 first-year candidates – second baseman Chase Utley with 111 votes (28.8) and third baseman David Wright with 24 (6.2).
The Hall of Fame has 346 elected members, including 273 players, of whom 139 have come through the BBWAA ballot.
The elections of Beltré and Mauer bring to 60 the total of players elected in their first year of eligibility by the BBWAA.
This year marked the 10th time the BBWAA elected three players and the first time since 2017 when Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Iván Rodríguez made the grade.
The average ballot in the 2024 election contained seven names voted for, up from 5.86 last year, with 24.4% of the voters using all 10 slots, up from 13.9% a year ago.
The total of ballots cast marked a 97.7% return rate of the 394 ballots mailed to voters. There were no blank ballots submitted.
Jim Leyland previously elected to Hall of Fame for class of 2024
Leyland, who took three franchises to the postseason and led the Florida Marlins to the 1997 World Series title, was previously elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame via the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee process.
Leyland was a candidate on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executive/Umpires Ballot, which was considered by a 16-member committee that held meetings during the Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn. The eight-person ballot was comprised of candidates whose primary contribution to the game came from 1980 to the present.
The longtime skipper was named on 15 of 16 ballots as the only candidate to reach the 75-percent threshold necessary for election.
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