A 2026 Hall of Fame Ballot of Your Own – and a Schedule of Profiles
Hall of Fame season is underway, and in addition to working my way through the eight candidates on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committtee ballot, I’ve gotten a start on the annual BBWAA ballot. With the latter, it’s time to launch what’s become a yearly tradition at FanGraphs. In the spirit of our annual free agent contract crowdsourcing, we’re inviting registered users to fill out their own virtual Hall of Fame ballots using a cool gizmo that Sean Dolinar built a few years ago. I’m also going to use this page to lay out a tentative schedule for the remainder of the series, as well as links to the profiles that have been published.
To participate in the crowdsourcing, you must be signed in, and you may only vote once. While you don’t have to be a FanGraphs Member to do so, this is a perfect time to mention that buying a Membership does help to fund the development of cool tools like this — and it makes a great holiday gift! To replicate the actual voting process, you may vote for anywhere from zero to 10 players; ballots with more than 10 votes won’t be counted. You may change your ballot until the deadline, which is December 31, 2025, the same as that of the actual BBWAA voters, who have to schlep their paper ballot to the mailbox.
The ballot is here and contains all 27 candidates (and no, you still can’t write in Pete Rose or Barry Bonds). We’ve got tables of career stats for the ballot’s position players and pitchers if that helps, as well as a checkbox on our leaderboards that allows you to see the stats of those already enshrined. As with last year, I’ll write up the crowdsourcing results sometime before the announcement of the official results on January 20.
As for the schedule, I’m still piecing it together, so what is sketched out below is incomplete and should be regarded as tentative; I’ll flesh things out in the coming weeks. I do anticipate several first-year candidates with no shot at election — the one-and-dones — running sometime in early January, which allows me to focus on the stronger cases before the ballot deadline while continuing to pitch in with our coverage of free agent signings and other offseason news. This also lets me go a bit longer with the profiles of those one-and-done candidates, for whom just appearing on the ballot after an impressive career is its own reward. In order to free up space for contemporary coverage, I sometimes group together brief summaries and updates of a few down-ballot candidates, such as those of PED-linked sluggers Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, as relatively little has changed in their cases since last year.
Rest assured that I’ll be covering every candidate at length or in brief, in keeping with what I’ve done since the start of my JAWS-flavored coverage in 2004 (I celebrated the 20th anniversary in early 2024). I’m not about to miss any now. New profiles below are denoted with asterisks.
Nov. 17: Ballot Intro
Nov. 19: Carlos Beltrán
Nov. 26: Chase Utley
Dec. 1: Félix Hernández
Dec. 2: Cole Hamels*
Dec. 4: Andy Pettitte
Dec. 5: Mark Buehrle
Dec. 8: Contemporary Baseball Era Committee results
Dec. 9: Andruw Jones
Dec. 10: Manny Ramirez/Alex Rodriguez
Dec. 11: Dustin Pedroia
Dec. 15: David Wright
Dec. 16: Jimmy Rollins/Torii Hunter/Bobby Abreu
Dec. 17: Ryan Braun*
Dec: 19: Alex Gordon*
Dec: 22: Omar Vizquel/Francisco Rodríguez
Dec. 23: Edwin Encarnación*
Dec. 30: My ballot
Jan. 5: Hunter Pence*
Jan. 7: Shin-Soo Choo*
Jan. 9: Matt Kemp*
Jan. 12: Rick Porcello*
Jan. 13: Gio Gonzalez*
Jan. 15: Howie Kendrick*
Jan. 16: Daniel Murphy*
Jan. 19: Nick Markakis*
Jan. 20: Crowdsource and Results
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
I’d recommend to anyone filling out the ballot that if you use the in-ballot links, make sure to open the link in a separate tab. Any marked votes will “reset” if you jump back from a player page using back/forward navigation
Man, this ballot is thin.
The best players (Beltran, A-Rod- Man-Ram) all have cheating/PED issues. So does Pettitte.
Andruw Jones has some personal baggage & if you don’t 100% buy defensive stats his case becomes tougher. Vizquel is similar but worse (much worse on the personal stuff), same with K-Rod.
Utley has the peak but short career. Wright is similar but worse.
Abreu has stats, but, never “felt” like a star.
Buerhle/Felix/Hamels are short of traditional SP standards & not sure they do even adjusting for their era (which is different from even today’s usage patterns)
& a bunch of guys that had nice careers, but, really aren’t HOF candidates.
Could maybe get to 10, but, someone could say they only voted for 3-5 people & it wouldn’t be outrageous, IMO.
I voted for 4, and it was my first time voting for Utley. It’s the weakest ballot I’ve seen in a long time, and I (I can’t believe I’m saying this) can see someone voting for no one. There’s no shoe ins.
Absolutely agree – I also voted for four (A-Rod, Manny, Andruw, Beltran) and would be more likely to vote for 0/10 than 10/10.
I can see zero also for the same reasons.
To discount Jones’ defense you have to not only not buy into defensive statistics, but also disbelieve the uncontroverted consensus of all the players, coaches, scouts, executives, media, and fans that saw with their own two eyes how good he was. I guess you could call Ozzie Smith an undeserved hall of famer, too, if you wanted to.
The only real reason to not vote for Andruw Jones is that you think his DV arrest is disqualifying.
While not diminishing the seriousness of the issue, I have come to acquire the (probably unpopular) opinion that the electorate places disproportionate emphasis on off-field concerns. I think the voters should judge the candidates based on their credentials and leave the character parsing to the wider public; my ballot will reflect that. If anyone leaves someone off their ballot because it betrays their conscience, I can respect that, but it’s not something I can fundamentally agree with.
As someone who’s always had Jones on my personal ballot…I can understand applying a discount to Jones’ TZ numbers, and deciding he comes out on the wrong side of borderline as a result.
But I would very much disagree.
He is almost certainly the greatest center field defender of all time. You could even make an argument that he is the second greatest defender of all time after Mark Belanger. And he was a pretty good hitter too!
Oh, for sure – that “discount” would be “I think he was probably +20 rather than +30 in CF from 97-01,” haha!
That knocks 5 wins off his career WAR and 4 off his peak…which still leaves him at 62 fWAR/42.1 fWAR7, and 52.6 fJAWS!
Still pretty firmly on my side of the border – and I’m not going to argue with anyone saying he was a +25 those years.
BTW, I voted for him, but, here is the other side case:
His #’s are such an outlier that you could question them. His defensive runs in fWAR are 278..2nd best OF of all time is Willie Mays at 169 (in 50% more innings), 3rd is Paul Blair at 160, 4th is Devon White at 150, 5th is Kenny Lofton at 139.
It’s such an outlier, it causes one to question the #’s, otherwise we just assume Jones is the best OF of all-time..40% more valuable than anyone ever! & 2x all but 4 other CF’s! (BTW, this doesn’t happen at SS or C or anywhere else..all of those have a bunch of players not far apart in defensive runs)
If you regress the # down to Willie Mays total, which is still the best OF per inning of all time BTW, the WAR case is not so cut & dried.
Now maybe you could say the best OF all time should still be in (which I do, BTW)..esp when he also his 400 HR, but, the #’s are suspicious.
We have debates about whether the odd defensive #’s were unfair to Sheffield, why couldn’t the opposite be true for Jones?
The difference between Jones’ and Sheffield’s numbers is that Jones put up a +20 UZR/150 over the next 6 years, whereas Sheffield seemingly improved from a -15 OF to a -10 one in his mid-late 30s.
I voted for 10 guys but 8-11 were nearly indistinguishable
I’m decidedly a big hall guy, but I only could get to 7 including Manny and Arod.
Ya I can see that. If they made 7 the limit I wouldn’t have given the last three a second thought.
I gotta ask – which 10 did you get to? I can barely squint to see plausible cases for about seven at best, and that’s being pretty charitable to edge cases like Abreu
I guess favorable ballots for other edge cases like Hamels could charitably get to 9 or 10. Still, I imagine there were be a scant few ballots submitting a full ten names
I don’t know how anyone is finding ten Hall of Famers on this ballot. I voted for four but easily could’ve voted for only one (Beltran). A lot of guys are right on the borderline. I think Jones, Abreu, and Utley are on the right side of it while Hamels and Pettitte are on the wrong side, but it’s so close and I don’t feel strongly convicted about any of them.
The log jam is well and truly over!
Only 6 checks, this year:
Utley
Beltran
Jones
Hamels
Buehrle
Pettitte
I put those six plus Felix, Abreu, Arod, and Wright.
I’m actually a little unsure about all the pitchers except for Pettitte who I think deserves credit as one of the only selflessly honest players about PED and also his amazing postseason success. I’m also unsure about Wright but think he deserves consideration. He’s a bit like Dale Murphy, in a few ways.
I will say that I disagree with commenters that say zero votes this year would be reasonable. It would not. You should vote for someone. This is a museum and anything that moves towards making it harder and harder to elect people, in the face of the fact that more recent players are disproportionately excluded, is not reasonable. Everyone should at least find 2-3 players, whoever they feel is the most deserving, and check those names.
Great point on Pettitte meriting bonus “character clause” points (alongside Sheffield!) for being honest about his PED use.
If I were an actual voter, and my yes or no had an impact, I’d probably vote Pedroia for the same reason you voted Wright.
I will say that I have Hamels firmly above the rest of the pitchers, just because he came up in a different than Buehrle/Pettitte and sustained his excellence longer than Felix (whom I rate in the Oswalt/Lee/Gooden/Guidry tier of the HoVG).
I think Sale already deserves to be in…and that Hamels is the bar by which Cole/Fried/Gausman/Wheeler should be measured.
(DeGrom is DeGrom – no idea how to measure him!)
I would totally disagree and think a ballot with zero names checked – if one is giving true and careful deliberation and not just submitting a blank ballot as some kind of fuddy-duddy protest about something or other – is absolutely reasonable. In my mind a full ballot of barely deserving guys is more unreasonable than one with no one selected.
Beltrán, Utley, and Jones are on this ballot, though
The four SP with legit HOF chances were collectively active from 1995 (Pettitte’s first year) to 2020 (Hamels last year). For the career rankings in parentheses below I set the leaderboard at minimum 1000 IP as SP from 1990 onward to give us five years on either side. That returned a pool of 330 pitchers.
CAREERS
95-13 Pettitte (3,300 IP | 11th)
60.9 rWAR (18th) | 67.7 fWAR (11th)
104 K%+ (117th) | 84 BB%+ (121st) | 72 HR9+ (14th)
86 ERA- (45th) | 83 FIP- (30th)
00-15 Buehrle (3,247 IP | 12th)
59.4 rWAR (19th) | 51.7 fWAR (23rd)
78 K%+ (296th) | 65 BB%+ (30th) | 94 HR9+ (138th)
87 ERA- (52nd) | 93 FIP- (103rd)
05-19 Felix (2,724 IP | 27th)
55.2 rWAR (22nd) | 54.1 fWAR (19th)
120 K%+ (36th) | 87 BB%+ (151st) | 80 HR9+ (38th)
84 ERA- (41st) | 85 FIP- (39th)
06-20 Hamels (2,695 IP | 30th)
61.8 rWAR (17th) | 51.7 fWAR (22nd)
117 K%+ (48th) | 84 BB%+ (122nd) | 99 HR9+ (173rd)
82 ERA- (29th) | 87 FIP- (47th)
[Everyone is pretty tightly grouped between 17th and 22nd by rWAR with a little wider range from 11th to 23rd by fWAR. Pettitte’s most impressive attributes are the longevity and HR suppression. What might be most impressive about Buehrle is that he could throw so many innings without striking anybody out, while his walk rate is on a whole other level among this quartet. Felix has the most well rounded profile hanging out around the Top 40 in all of K rate, HR suppression, run prevention and fielding independent measures. Hamels K rate and overall fielding independent sneak inside the Top 50 with his raw -0.26 ERA/FIP gap coming in 46th on the leaderboard, Buehrle’s -0.30 gap is a few spots up in 30th]
For the prime section below the rankings in parentheses will correspond with the pitcher pool for that specific time frame only to zoom in a little more contemporaneously for each pitcher…
PRIMES
95-07 Pettitte (2,511 IP | 7th)
(among 122 SP min. 1,000 IP)
48.9 rWAR (9th) | 54.2 fWAR (8th)
105 K%+ (43rd) | 83 BB%+ (45th) | 68 HR9+ (7th)
85 ERA- (20th) | 82 FIP- (14th)
01-11 Buehrle (2,425 IP | 1st)
(among 104 SP min. 1,000 IP)
47.5 rWAR (6th) | 42.1 fWAR (6th)
81 K%+ (86th) | 65 BB%+ (14th) | 93 HR9+ (40th)
84 ERA- (20th) | 90 FIP- (30th)
05-15 Felix (2,262 IP | 3rd)
(among 103 SP min. 1,000 IP)
54.9 rWAR (1st) | 52.4 fWAR (1st)
127 K%+ (6th) | 83 BB%+ (45th) | 71 HR9+ (5th)
77 ERA- (6th) | 78 FIP- (4th)
06-16 Hamels (2,211 IP | 4th)
(among 96 SP min. 1,000 IP)
52.4 rWAR (4th) | 45.2 fWAR (5th)
122 K%+ (11th) | 80 BB%+ (32nd) | 100 HR9+ (50th)
81 ERA- (12th) | 85 FIP- (14th)
[Pettitte, Buehrle, and Hamels don’t make too big of gains in their rate stats narrowing it down to their primes but they were all Top Five to Ten pitchers for a decade plus among their direct contemporaries. Felix being the best pitcher for a decade plus makes him an easy yes for me, call it the Dick Allen Rule (his 163 wRC+ from 1964-74 was best in MLB)]
Figured since we made it this far we might as well click the microscope one more setting and look at each pitcher’s peak…
PEAKS
96-97 Pettitte (458 IP | 12th)
(among 118 SP min. 200 IP)
12.2 rWAR (9th) | 11.6 fWAR (7th)
107 K%+ (29th) | 78 BB%+ (33rd) | 50 HR9+ (4th)
72 ERA- (12th) | 75 FIP- (10th)
01-05 Buehrle (1,172 IP | 2nd)
(among 119 SP min. 500 IP)
25.8 rWAR (8th) | 22.9 fWAR (9th)
89 K%+ (71st) | 66 BB%+ (15th) | 86 HR9+ (33rd)
78 ERA- (12th) | 85 FIP- (21st)
09-14 Felix (1,394 IP | 1st)
(among 107 SP min. 600 IP)
38.5 rWAR (2nd) | 37.2 fWAR (t-1st)
129 K%+ (4th) | 78 BB%+ (28th) | 62 HR9+ (2nd)
70 ERA- (2nd) | 72 FIP- (3rd)
10-16 Hamels (1,061 IP | 6th)
(among 96 SP min. 700 IP)
36.6 rWAR (2nd) | 30.3 fWAR (6th)
119 K%+ (13th) | 84 BB%+ (41st) | 94 HR9+ (39th)
79 ERA- (8th) | 85 FIP- (15th)
[Pettitte had another mini-peak from 02-05 where he put up a similar 75 ERA- | 73 FIP- but missed some time due to injury so didn’t quite have the quantity. Buehrle’s 1,172 IP over his five year peak is more IP than all but 38 active pitchers have in their career. Felix the King. Hamels just a model of consistency, put up at least 4.5 rWAR or fWAR every year from 2007 thru 2016 with the exception of 2009.]
I put all four of these guys on my virtual ballot. The only way there will ever start to be some momentum towards adjusting pitcher standards to more accurately reflect the changing usage/injury landscape (hellscape?) is by voting in some of the “borderline” guys who fall short of the traditional standards, but are well beyond what we can realistically expect from future candidates aside from guys like Greinke, Kershaw, Verlander, and Scherzer who are basically already in, then Cole & Sale who are a little more questionable, maybe even deGrom if he throws some more innings (he’d already be a yes for me too).
I just can’t get there with Felix, in a Hall without Oswalt or Lee.
I do like to look at RE24 for HoF stuff, because it’s modeled on WAA, privileging excellence and penalizing folks who compile WAR as below average players.
Pettitte is 16th during his career, with 228.76
Buehrle is 9th, with 232.45
Felix is 12th, with 174.97
Hamels is 6th, with 240.25
(I will add that I agree Sale’s already earned it, in my book – he’s firmly ensconced in 5th, behind the Big 4)
Abreu, Beltran, Jones, Pettitte, Ramirez, A. Rodriguez, F. Rodriguez, Utley
No regrets. I will say: my attachment of thee votes is weak
K-Rod and no Hamels or Felix is very odd to me.
The 23rd consecutive year I’ve made a mock ballot, and the first time I did not select 10 players.
I wrote in Chase Utley’s name 10 times before resigning my BBWAA membership in protest when he didn’t get in
-sadtrombone, in an alternate universe, probably
(I was trying to find the name of the writer who did that with Jack Morris and it is not easy to find! I wonder if the writer employed a scrubbing service to make it harder to google)
Ken Gurnick. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna54008357
Abreu, Beltrán, Jones, Rodriguez, Ramirez, Utley.
I suspect I’ll eventually budge on Pettitte, Félix, Buehrle, Hamels–none of whose candidacies excite me much. It’s more a matter of fairness. They suffer from comparison to contemporaries who were a lot better, and yet their near value-equivalents among position players often get in without much fuss.
Abreu
Beltran
Buehrle
Hamels
Felix
Jones
Pettite
Manny
A-Rod
Utley
All fairly easy choices for me. Would have probably given K-Rod a vote if not for the 10 vote limit
I think Chase Utley is an easy choice because I am peak-over-totals for the Hall of Fame and Utley’s peak was spectacular.
If you were to ask who the best second basemen were starting with Jackie Robinson’s debut, who would it be? I think everyone would pick Joe Morgan, and then I think it’s probably Jackie Robinson. And then it depends on whether you count Rod Carew as a second baseman, and then how much you value the defensive metrics for Bobby Grich when he had Mark Belanger lining him up in the right spots.
And then I think you run out of players to put above Utley. Craig Biggio and Roberto Alomar and Ryne Sandberg have a lot more counting stats but Utley’s peak is so much better than either of theirs and they have similar career WAR.
If you were to take the seasons of all four and just sorted by fWAR where they counted as second basemen, this is what the top 10 would look like, in order:
1) Biggio
2) Utley
3) Utley
4) Sandberg
5) Utley
6) Sandberg
7) Alomar
8) Utley
9) Utley
10) Alomar
Shouldn’t the guy who has 5 of the top 30 seasons at a position since 1951 be in the Hall of Fame?
Be honest, you just want to have a catch with him!
“Do you get along with your dad? Me neither.”
It would be fun! But something tells me he and I wouldn’t have much to talk about.
And it would be far less productive than Biggio’s and Bagwell’s several offseasons spent working out with Ken Caminiti!
Wild how quickly that Caminiti crew, including Abreu, saw their power performance collapse in 2005.
Defense needs more respect in baseball and anyone who watched Andruw plays knows he was one of the best ever to do it. Throw in solid offensive numbers and he should be going to the hall. When he gets elected, I will be going to Cooperstown for the first time.
Abreu
Beltran
Buehrle
Hamels
Hernandez
Pedroia
Ramirez
A. Rodriguez
Utley
Wright
I was determined to vote for 10 and got there, but it was tough. I’m not 100% sold on Buehrle, Hamels, Pedroia, or Wright. A stronger year would’ve probably seen them on the outside, but none of them are terrible picks.
And, yes, if I were a for-realsies voter, I would also strive for 10 every year.
I voted for the following:
Abreu
Beltran
Buehrle
Hamels
Jones
Pettitte
Ramirez
A-Rod
Utley
Wright
Utley
Beltran
Felix
Hamels
A-Rod
Manny
Pettitte
Jones