Later today, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) will announce the results of its 2020 Hall of Fame election. So far, three players have been checked on more than 75% of the 210 ballots counted in Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker (the tracker is maintained by a four-person team of which I am a part), thus clearing the threshold for induction: Derek Jeter in his first year, Larry Walker in his final year, and Curt Schilling in his eighth year. While Schilling is expected to tail off and may even come in under 70%, the other two have at least a chance to hear their name called. Here are the candidates to receive at least 5% of the vote (the percentage needed to stay on the ballot) in the Tracker so far:

Since the 2013 shutout, the BBWAA has opened their doors to an unprecedented six-year flood of 20 inductees, capped by Mariano Rivera’s unanimous selection a year ago. The result has been a cleared ballot and a realistic path to induction for many candidates who have previously struggled to gain any traction. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: As we approach the January 22 Hall of Fame announcement, we’ll be featuring a few pieces from Anthony Calamis and Adam Dore, members of Ryan Thibodaux’s excellent team that tracks public Hall of Fame ballot. This is the first such piece. Be sure to check out the ballot tracker, which is an indispensable tool for any Hall of Fame enthusiast.

In case you have somehow missed any of Jay Jaffe’s excellent coverage over the last month, December is the time of the year when Hall of Fame ballots get mailed out. More than 400 BBWAA members comprise the voting body tasked with electing players to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

I’m part of a four-person ballot-tracking team led by Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) that finds every public ballot, records the percentage of votes for each candidate, and tracks which players have been added to or dropped from a voter’s ballot from one year to the next, assuming they were public in both years. Right now, there are 172 ballots in the Tracker.

This year in particular, a few intriguing trends have emerged as ballots have been made public. I chose to explore Mike Mussina’s candidacy and what needs to happen over the next nine days for him to share the stage next July with likely inductees such as Mariano Rivera.

Before diving into the particulars, here is a table showing the current results in the Tracker:

Three of the candidates have had their boxes checked on over 90% of known ballots. All the others are below the required 75% for election, leaving Mussina as the most interesting bubble candidate this year. In the 2018 voting, Mussina received votes on 268 of the possible 422 ballots cast, good for 63.5%, 11.5% (or 49 votes) shy of election; Chipper Jones, Vladimir Guerrero, Jim Thome and Trevor Hoffman all surpassed 75%.

Read the rest of this entry »