Editor’s Note: In the run up to the January 22 Hall of Fame announcement, we were fortunate to feature 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 final such piece. Be sure to check out the ballot tracker, which is an indispensable tool for any Hall of Fame enthusiast.

Last month, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum announced their latest group of inductees. Mariano Rivera received a vote on 100% of the ballots cast, while Edgar Martinez, Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina also cleared the 75% minimum.

Of the 35 players on the ballot, 11 got zero votes: Rick Ankiel, Jason Bay, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland, Travis Hafner, Ted Lilly, Derek Lowe, Darren Oliver, Juan Pierre, Vernon Wells and Kevin Youkilis.

The results for the other 24 players are summarized below:

With 425 ballots cast, the average ballot contained 8.01 names, down from 2018’s 8.46. 42.8% of voters used all 10 available votes, down from 50.0% last year.

Nearly half of the 3,404 total votes cast were awarded to candidates who are no longer on the ballot. 1,671 votes (49.1%) went to inductees Rivera, Martinez, Halladay, and Mussina, final-year candidate McGriff, and the quintet of players who failed to received the minimum 5% to remain on the ballot.

The result of having a four-man induction class – to go along with a swan song candidate who received a vote on nearly two fifths of all ballots – is that an average of 3.93 votes per ballot will be freed up come next year. Given 2019’s 8.01 votes-per-ballot overall average, the 2020 election cycle begins with just 4.08 returning candidates per ballot.

With nearly six open spots on the average ballot heading into next year, the 2020 results are bound to look quite a bit different than those we saw a month ago. For starters, there is a strong possibility of only a single new Hall of Famer earning election via the BBWAA.

Derek Jeter is expected to draw a vote share near 100%, but none of the other first-year eligible players are expected to garner significant support. Bobby Abreu should have a decent chance to clear the 5% minimum to be on the 2021 ballot, but it’s possible none of the rest of Jason Giambi, Cliff Lee, Alfonso Soriano, Paul Konerko, Josh Beckett, Adam Dunn, Rafael Furcal, and Eric Chavez do. That will leave a lot of room for returning candidates to either begin gathering momentum or continue building on it.

Full ballot voters may add multiple new candidates next year, since many who regularly check 10 boxes have indicated they would vote for 11 or more if the bylaws permitted it.

Following the BBWAA’s publishing of voluntary public ballots, we have collected 168 of the overall 182 10-player ballots cast in the Tracker. Looking specifically at the full ballots, the average number of votes for players making their final ballot appearance was 4.46, more than half a vote higher than the overall ballot average of 3.93.

If we assume that Jeter collects 100% of the vote (he will probably receive 99% – 100% of the vote anyway), then voters who submitted a ballot with the full allotment of 10 names have an average of only 6.54 spots filled in 2020, even after including Jeter.

Since the BBWAA returned to annual voting in 1966, the record for the largest year-over-year decrease in votes per ballot is 1.23, from 2007 to 2008; only two other times has votes per ballot decreased by more than 1.0. The 1.23 vote per ballot decrease (from 6.58 to 5.35) came following the elections of Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn, both of whom received over 97.5% of the vote. In 2008, Tim Raines (24.3%) was the only first-time eligible candidate to receive more than two votes, and his vote share was only slightly above 15th-year candidate Steve Garvey’s 21.1% showing the year prior.

The 14 players who got between 5% and 75% and will return to the 2020 ballot received an average of 4.08 votes per ballot. If voters tie the record for the largest decrease, there is still more than 2.5 votes per ballot to be spread out among newcomers and returnees next year.

There is a strong possibility that many of the 14 returning candidates receive at least a double-digit percentage increase from last year.

Overall Trends

When we last checked in on public voting data the afternoon of the announcement, there were 227 ballots logged in the Tracker. A few more ballots trickled in over the ensuing hours, increasing the total number of tracked ballots to 232 when Jeff Idelson stepped up the podium to announce the results.

Since the announcement, another 125 ballots have been made public. The 357 known ballots account for about 84% of the ballots cast, a Tracker-era high water mark.

The latest results in the Tracker are summarized in the following table, which shows how each player has done on the total public ballots, ballots released before and after the announcement, and those ballots that have not yet been released.

Among the interesting trends to emerge from the post-results data is Omar Vizquel receiving the sixth-most votes behind only the four inductees and Curt Schilling, Mussina receiving more than 75% of the vote on post-results public ballots, and Andy Pettitte tying Helton and outpolling Sheffield and others.

This marks the second consecutive cycle in which Vizquel finished markedly better in the final results than he was on track to. In 2018, he jumped from 33.5% to 37.0%, and this year he went from 38.4% to 42.8%.

The recent history of players getting 40-45% in their first five years has been a mixed bag, but Vizquel seems better positioned to make a slow climb than some of the others who have been in this range.

Jeff Bagwell began in a similar place to Vizquel but needed until 2017, his seventh year of eligibility, to gain the necessary 75%. It took Mussina a total of six years, with three coming after he entered the 40% range. Schilling and Barry Bonds, on the other hand, are still waiting and conceivably may never get there.

Encouragingly, 32 voters who did not vote for Vizquel in 2018 added him this year, the fourth-most among all returning candidates and the most among those with multiple years of eligibility remaining.

Nine voters withdrew their support for his case, but some of that could be temporary. One voter who “dropped” Vizquel cited ballot management, preferring to support Sheffield, while another added back Bonds after a temporary hiatus. Both of those voters chose 10 players. Nonetheless, the nine lost votes were tied with Manny Ramirez for the most in the cycle, and could be a sign of things to come for Vizquel.

Mussina got 76.7% of the votes overall, and was the only interesting bubble candidate heading into the announcement. The other 34 players were essentially guaranteed to either exceed 75% or fall short.

Moose was at 81.5% at the time of the announcement, and saw a drop of 6.5% from his pre-announcement public ballots to final percentage in 2018. That drop off shrank this year, however, leading to his induction. It is interesting to update data originally included in our piece from the day of the announcement.

The year before they were elected, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and Tim Raines saw their pre-announcement public percentages fall 6.7%, 6.3%, and 5.6%, respectively. When they cleared 75%, those figures dropped to 1.4%, 3.3%, and 2.8%, respectively. Mussina benefitted from this phenomenon as well; the aforementioned 6.5% turned into a 4.8% decrease this year.

Are Walker and/or Schilling, who each saw their percentage drop by around 10% this year, be next in line? It is entirely possible both spend much of the 2020 cycle above 75% on public ballots.

Besides Mussina and the question of Rivera’s unanimity, the most interesting topic leading into the announcement was probably Pettitte and how the post-results ballots would treat him. After getting under 7% support on pre-announcement public ballots, Pettitte received a vote on about 13% of the post-results public ballots, and is on more than 14% of the private ballots. Helton had a better overall debut, but the two were similarly well-received on these later ballots.

Pettitte could stand to be a huge beneficiary of the ballot logjam easing in 2020 and 2021, as he is on just 16 of the 168 known 10-player ballots.

Inductees

The only drama concerning Rivera was whether or not he’d become the first unanimous Hall of Fame choice by the BBWAA. Now that one player has been elected unanimously, will more follow? Derek Jeter could do it next year, and perhaps Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Ichiro Suzuki, and others could in the years that follow.

Rivera’s induction breaks one of the more bizarre baseball traditions and permanently puts an end to the notion that no candidate can be a unanimous baseball Hall of Famer since nobody before him was. That a relief pitcher became the first player ever to receive every single vote speaks volumes about Rivera’s stature in the game and quiets complaints of an “anti-closer” bias.

Martinez, as expected, easily cleared the 75% threshold in his final year of eligibility after falling just 20 votes short in 2018.

In so doing, he became only the seventh candidate in the annual voting era to miss induction in each of their first two years and then subsequently be elected with a vote share of greater than 85%, following Raines (86.0% in 2017), Bagwell (86.2% in 2017), Barry Larkin (86.4% in 2012), Rich Gossage (85.8% in 2008), Billy Williams (85.7% in 1987), and Duke Snider (86.5% in 1980).

He just barely missed breaking Raines’ record for highest percentage of votes received in a player’s last year of eligibility, but did break Paul Molitor’s record for the highest percentage for any player who played a plurality of their games at DH has gotten. Molitor got 85.2% in his first year of eligibility in 2004, a hair behind Martinez’ 85.4% share.

Halladay missed out on a top 10 share for a starting pitcher, but still finished with the 16th highest percentage of any starter ever.

The inductions of both Halladay and Mussina could bode well for Schilling and make him a down-to-the-wire case next year along with Walker. Two starting pitching contemporaries making it to Cooperstown may increase consideration Schilling receives among his current holdouts. With Schilling, however, there will always be the matter of his off-field persona to contend with.

Among public 2019 voters, 27 did not vote for Schilling after having done so at least once previously. A handful of voters have been on record stating they will no longer vote for him due to his vitriolic comments, but it is unclear how many of the aforementioned 27 withdrew their support for these reasons.

Considering that Schilling lost just one vote he had received in 2018 – on a ballot that included just three names this past year – it’s fair to speculate that Schilling won’t be getting many of those 27 votes back.

Mussina’s induction continues the recent trend of players receiving under 25% of the vote before subsequently earning induction. He is the fifth player to be elected by the BBWAA after getting under 25% of the vote at some point, following Tim Raines, Bert Blyleven, Bruce Sutter, and Duke Snider.

That Mussina received 24.6% just four years ago and is now in Cooperstown offers hope to a number of candidates who have struggled to earn support in the last number of years. Multiple down-ballot candidates could be primed for a huge breakthrough in 2020 following 11 inductees in the last three elections. Any number of candidates currently in the 10% – 20% range could begin the long climb to 75% à la Martinez or Mussina

Larry Walker

The most intriguing situation on next year’s ballot will be Walker’s push for 75% in his final year of eligibility. If he were to get there, he’d be the third player in the last four years to cross 75% in their last chance.

Walker received 232 votes on the 425 ballots cast this year, 87 votes away from the magic threshold. With 193 “no” votes, he needs a bit less than half of the people who didn’t vote for him to change their minds.

Walker has at least 33 chances to gain a vote on ballots containing 10 names, and at least 42 additional chances to gain a vote on ballots containing eight or nine names with Bonds or Clemens, or seven, eight or nine names without them.

Those three groups were all ones with which Mussina excelled this year as he made the climb from below 64% to above 76%, and will be key for Walker as well.

Mussina gaining entrance this year also makes it more likely that some of the 69 ballots not included above could add him as they lose anywhere from 1 to 5 players on their ballots.

Others

The cat is already out of the bag that Walker will be the most fascinating story to follow nine months from now. Schilling has an outside chance at election as well. Beyond those top two returning vote-getters from last year, there is plenty of room for growth for numerous other candidates who will appear on the 2020 ballot.

Bonds and Clemens received the next highest vote shares of any returning candidates after Walker and Schilling, but are once again unlikely to gain much ground in 2020. After Clemens reeled in 54.1% and Bonds 53.8% in 2017, the two have seen only marginal vote increases in the two years since. Clemens increased 3.2% in ‘18 and 2.2% in ‘19, while Bonds gained 2.6% followed by 2.7% in the same timeframe.

Both will surpass 60% next year but probably not by more than a couple percentage points. It is possible that they gain some new support from voters who are typically stingier with awarding votes. Perhaps after seeing the ballot logjam rapidly clearing, voters would prefer to vote for this pair rather than return a ballot with only two or three names checked.

Expanding on the earlier exploration of his candidacy, Vizquel finds himself in a favorable position with a 42.8% share in 2019. Already more than 5% past the halfway point to election, Vizquel has another eight years to pick up an additional 32.2% – which would require right around a 4.0% annual increase. Most candidates in a similar position have historically been elected, often sooner rather than later, as the rate of increase tends to increase rapidly once a candidate holds a majority of the votes.

Overall, there are 168 public 10-player ballots. Of them, eight voters will have at most four holdovers, 71 will have five holdovers, 80 have six holdovers, and nine will have seven or eight holdovers.

Each of these candidates has at least 100 add opportunities on full ballots, and all except Ramirez and Scott Rolen have at least 95 chances to gain a vote on full ballots that already have Bonds, Clemens, and two or more of Schilling, Walker and Vizquel.

From 2018 to 2019, the percentage of voters using all 10 spots decreased from 50% to 42.8%, and a similar decrease this year would still leave a lot of space for these candidates to pick up considerable ground.

In that vein, it is worthwhile to look at how holdovers did in the following year recently.

The lower total of gained votes per ballot for returning candidates in 2018 can be explained by a very strong showing from first-time candidates that same year. Chipper Jones and Jim Thome both sailed into Cooperstown on their first try, with 97.2% and 89.8% of the vote, respectively. Both of those marks were higher than all three 2017 inductees – Bagwell, Raines, and Ivan Rodriguez.

Vizquel’s healthy 37.0% debut accounted for a higher share than Lee Smith’s final year showing of 34.2% the prior year. Rolen and Jones each received enough support to remain on the ballot.

The average votes gained jumped to more than one full vote per ballot in 2019, despite two first-ballot inductees. The big difference was that this past election followed a four-player induction class, whereas 2018 followed up a three-man class.

It is pretty much a guarantee that the 1.06 mark will improve substantially in 2020 after another four inductees and McGriff are off the ballot, and with Jeter the only newcomer likely to earn much support.

With ballots for 168 of the 182 10-player ballots, and 357 of the 425 total ballots, it is possible to get a good sense for how voters will react to the downturn in first-ballot locks over the next three cycles and better spot trends. We’re excited to pick it up again next year.

With the Hall of Fame announcement of the 2019 Class set for this evening, many baseball fans are eagerly awaiting the 6 PM EST arrival of results. We perused our Tracker and uncovered voting trends for most of the candidates on the ballot for you to enjoy while you’re waiting to pop the champagne. If you’re from Seattle or Toronto, we would suggest that you go ahead and book a Cooperstown hotel for July’s induction weekend as soon as you’re finished reading. If you’re a New Yorker, pack up the car and bring enough lawn chairs for 50,000 others. Here is a rundown of the vote through 226 ballots, ordered by current vote percentage in the tracker:

Mariano Rivera (226-of-226, 100%)

Spoiler alert: Mariano Rivera will be elected to the Hall of Fame later this evening. He almost certainly won’t be elected unanimously, but he could conceivably top Ken Griffey Jr.’s record-setting 99.32% share. In order to outpace Grifey’s 437-of-440 mark, Rivera can miss no more than two votes, since the number of ballots cast is expected to be be fewer than it was in 2016.

Rivera will become the second relief pitcher elected by the BBWAA in as many years, following Trevor Hoffman’s induction a year ago – not to mention the Today’s Game Committee’s selection of Lee Smith just one month ago. In an interview for Mark Newman’s Yankee Legends, Hoffman said of Rivera, “He has been a great ambassador for the game and he’ll be a welcome addition here.”

Rivera is set to become to first pure reliever inducted into the Hall of Fame on his first opportunity. Dennis Eckersley received 83.2% in 2004, but he spent the first 12 seasons of his career predominantly working as a starting pitcher before shifting to the bullpen full-time in 1997.

Roy Halladay (210-of-226, 92.9%)

Roy Halladay stands a very good chance at posthumously becoming the 56th first-ballot Hall of Famer. All types of voters have taken to his candidacy, checking his name at least 85% of the time on every ballot size except zero-to-four player ones. The current estimate is that he will need a “yes” vote on 53.2% of the remaining ballots to clear the 75% threshold.

The most any candidate has ever dropped in his pre-announcement to post-announcement totals is Mike Mussina, who fell 11.0% in 2015. Halladay’s percentage could fall that far and he’d still be inducted with more than 80% of the vote.

Will 90% of voters vote for Halladay? A vote share that high for a starting pitcher is actually much rarer than you’d think.

He could become the 11th starting pitcher in history to receive 90% of the vote if he stays above that mark.

Regardless of where his vote share ends up, it is a near-certainty he will be inducted into Cooperstown as one of the all-time greats, and next July will be a celebration of the life one of baseball’s best.

Edgar Martinez (204-of-226, 90.3%)

After falling 20 votes short in 2018, Edgar Martinez fans should be encouraged by the DH’s early returns. He’s seen 46 of his “no” voters from last year reveal their ballots and has received a “yes” vote from 26 of them. Incorporating one lost vote, he is currently at +25. There is always a degree of uncertainty in how the electorate will change from one year to the next, but he’s in great shape.

Since the BBWAA returned to annual voting in 1966, there have been seven instances of a candidate receiving at least 55% of the vote in their penultimate year on the ballot. All seven have been inducted eventually, though some needed help from a small committee to gain entry. Martinez is the third player in the last 15 years to reach 65% of the vote entering their final try. His situation compares well to the previous two.

Like Raines, Martinez had a strong campaign elevate his candidacy. He went from 27% to 43.4% to 58.6% to 70.4% of the vote, and appears primed to hear his name announced today, becoming the second player in three years to earn election in their final year of eligibility.

One last note of intrigue concerns whether Martinez can set the record for the highest vote share for a player in their final year. Currently, Tim Raines holds that record with 86.0% in 2017. Can Martinez remain that high? He’s dropped more than that in previous years, but so too had Raines.

If the difference between his final and pre-announcement results increases by the same amount as Raines’ did, 90.2% would be the mark to target in order to beat Raines’ record.

Mike Mussina (184-of-226, 81.4%)

Mussina emerged early in this cycle as the ballot’s most interesting bubble candidate. He received 63.5% of the vote last year, just 49 votes shy of election.

A more detailed breakdown of Mussina’s chances was published here last week, but many ballots have been revealed since then.

He’s only received one additional vote on these new ballots, but it was from a voter who voted only for the four inductees last year, a “Small Hall, no PED” voter. That group still likely comprises the majority of remaining voters, so for Mussina to change a mind there bodes well for his chances.

This evening, Mussina fans should hope he once again experiences a post-announcement surge.

Since inactive voters began losing voting eligibility, Mussina’s post-announcement gains have by and large kept pace with his pre-announcement gains percentage-wise. He needs an overall gain of 11.5% to clear 75%. If the pattern holds, he’ll be agonizingly close to the votes he needs.

It’s also worth noting that players who have been in the 80% range have seen the differential between their pre-announcement and final share shrink. After drops of 6.7%, 6.3%, and 5.6% the year before they were each elected, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and Raines saw their final shares decrease by only 1.4%, 3.3%, and 2.8% when they crossed 75%. If Mussina’s gap shrinks, that would help a lot.

Barry Bonds (161-of-226, 71.2%) and Roger Clemens (162-of-226, 71.7%)

Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are grouped together here because their situations are virtually identical. One is arguably the greatest player of all-time; the other is arguably among the greatest pitchers of all-time. They would have been in the Hall of Fame years ago if not for their connections to performance-enhancing drugs. Instead, they have been passed over six times. Clemens reached 57.3% last year, while Bonds got to 56.4%.

Both men have seen virtually no change in support from 2017 to now; Bonds has netted just four public votes in the last two cycles, with Clemens gaining six. So is there any hope that these two make it to Cooperstown on the BBWAA’s ballot?

Well, both candidates are much closer to the 75% threshold now than they were just a few years back. After each landed in almost exactly the same spot from 2013 to 2015, the duo has seen a series of favorable events fall their way.

The Hall reduced the window of eligibility for players to be considered from 15 to 10 years prior to the 2015 election. While seemingly hurting their chances by allotting them fewer opportunities on the ballot, Bonds and Clemens may have actually benefited, as the 10-year limit has coincided with a number of players making large gains in an effort by voters to get worthy players inducted before their time runs out.

Of much greater aid to Bonds and Clemens was the Hall’s decision to dramatically decrease the voter pool prior to the 2016 election, which meant revoking the voting rights of honorary BBWAA members who had not held active status within the last 10 years. This rule change preceded jumps of 7.7% and 7.5% for Clemens and Bonds, respectively, in 2016.

The very next year, the Today’s Game Committee inducted Bud Selig to the Hall of Fame, nearly unanimously. Pandamonium ensued following the selection of the man who presided over the Steroid Era and chose to ignore what was happening in the sport, and as a result, a large number of voters began supporting Bonds and Clemens, feeling as though there is no reason they should be kept out if Selig was already enshrined. Clemens tacked on an additional 8.9% and Bonds increased his share by 9.5%.

As already mentioned, the support for these two has hit a wall in the two years since. Support will continue to grow slowly due to voter turnover as new voters enter the pool and older voters lose eligibility. Since the election of Bud Selig, public first-time voters have overwhelmingly supported both – Clemens at 31-of-35 and Bonds at a 30-of-35 clip.

Still, some chips have to fall the right way for Bonds and Clemens to have a shot at BBWAA induction. Much like with Curt Schilling, the first hurdle is clearing 60% of the vote. It may not be as dramatic as with other candidates, but it is likely that there are voters who will begin to support Bonds and Clemens if, say, a 60-65% majority of their peers have already done so.

It is also conceivable that a handful of voters are simply waiting until 2022 – the final time Bonds and Clemens will appear on the writers’ ballot – to check those two boxes.

A lot can happen over the course of three years. Perhaps there will be yet another referendum by the Hall that, whether intentionally or inadvertently, will present a more favorable outlook for the two of the arguably most widely debated candidates in history.

Curt Schilling (158-of-226, 69.9%)

After Schilling praised a photo of a t-shirt that advocated the lynching of journalists, his support dropped from 52.3% to 45.0%. He recovered most of that lost support in the 2018 cycle, rising to 51.2%, but along the way lost two valuable years of eligibility. At +17, he’s been among the big gainers so far this cycle, but it might be too little, too late.

The most important benchmark for Schilling’s eventual candidacy is clearing 60%. Only Gil Hodges has cleared that mark with the BBWAA and failed to later make the Hall of Fame. Schilling has three more tries left before his Hall fate is left in the hands of small committees. If Mussina is elected this year, Schilling will be the top returning candidate without a hard link to performance-enhancing drugs, though his offensive and inflammatory public persona persists. In recent years, top returners without a tie to PEDs have usually been inducted in short order.

Piazza, Raines, Hoffman, and Vladimir Guerrero were all inducted in their first try as one of the top two returning clean candidates. Martinez is expected to follow suit, and Mussina might as well.

At 60%, Schilling would need to average a gain of just 5% per year to make it to 75%. If he does better, his chances increase that much more. He won’t be elected today, but the important thing to look at when assessing his future candidacy will be whether or not he can clear into the 60s and whether Mussina is elected.

Larry Walker (149-of-226, 65.9%)

A breakdown of Larry Walker’s candidacy was explored in full last week, with some of the findings updated below following the influx of 49 ballots since then.

After seeing a huge uptick in public ballot support (+47 net gained votes so far) and appearing on 75.8% of all ballots of at least seven votes cast, Walker appears primed for a huge vote increase this year. Come 2020, there is a chance Walker is in a very similar position to where Mussina finds himself now. Ballot space will be cleared as four or five candidates – including Fred McGriff – who received a sizable vote total will exit the ballot in advance of next year. As with McGriff and Martinez, it is quite common for candidates to receive an additional boost in their final year of BBWAA eligibility.

The sudden, dramatic increase Walker has experienced is rather unprecedented, and it should allow him to clear 55% with relative ease. He’d be hard-pressed to see such a jump next year, but then again, nobody foresaw his current trends as a possibility either.

Fred McGriff (89-of-226, 39.4%)

Three years ago, Alan Trammell entered his final year of eligibility with the BBWAA with just 25.1% support. He went +39 among public, returning voters en route to surpassing 40%, then was promptly elected his first try in front of a small committee.

Smith didn’t enjoy the same final-year bump, in no small part due to the presence of Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and Guerrero all debuting alongside him, but he had previously cleared 50% in 2012. He was elected unanimously by the Today’s Game Committee last month.

McGriff’s best path towards induction is to follow in their footsteps and clear 40%. If he can do that, he might be viewed favorably when his name is put before a committee in a few years. Right now, he’s trending in the upper 30s, but has typically fared better with later ballots than earlier ones. Whether that holds now that he has been getting additions from voters who vote for 10 players remains to be seen.

His meteoric rise is one of the biggest stories of the cycle, however, and it will be extremely interesting to see if he ends up over 40%.

Omar Vizquel (85/226, 37.6%)

In just his second year of eligibility, Omar Vizquel has received the third-most “+1s” of any candidate, with 23. It seems unlikely that he can cross 50%, though if he does, eventual induction would seem to be assured; only one candidate not on the current ballot has ever received 50% of the BBWAA vote and not made the Hall of Fame, though some have needed help from the committees.

Even if Vizquel settles in around 46 to 48%, he has eight more years of eligibility to get the required remaining votes. With fewer players coming onto the ballot in the coming years who are expected to draw significant support, Vizquel could quickly emerge as a candidate for rapid increases.

Only a small handful of players have ever cleared 40% and not gotten into the Hall of Fame, namely Hodges, Marty Marion, Maury Wills, Roger Maris, Tony Oliva, and Steve Garvey.

Vizquel fans should look to 45% as a reasonable target this year, as that’s where most of the above names stopped making further progress.

Manny Ramirez (58-of-226, 25.7%)

Unfortunately for Ramirez, he remains stuck in PED-tainted purgatory on the Hall ballot. After collecting a vote share of 23.8% as a first-time eligible candidate in 2017 and dipping slightly to 22.0% in 2018, he appears set to land right around those two marks yet again. The reasoning behind both why his vote total has been stagnant and is unlikely to change much year-to-year is simple: he is the only player discussed here to be handed a suspension by MLB for a positive PED test, an event that occurred multiple times. For a player who most would agree statistically merits enshrinement, the PED stain is a major obstacle to overcome. One positive sign for Ramirez is that a number of voters may begin to consider him as ballot space permits, holding to the philosophy that he deserves a vote, but not at the expense of another worthy candidate who was never disciplined by MLB for PED usage.

Scott Rolen (48-of-226, 21.2%)

Scott Rolen has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the ballot logjam easing. Of those candidates who received under 20% of the vote last year, he has seen the biggest net increase in votes from returning voters, at +16.

His initial vote share of 10.2% would be historically low for a candidate eventually elected by the BBWAA, but the recent past provides more reason for optimism if Rolen can see a jump to around 19%. In his fifth year of eligibility, Walker received votes on 11.8% of ballots cast and is now expected to clear 50% handily. Martinez bottomed out with 25.2% in his fifth year, and is now on the doorstep of Cooperstown.

Walker and Martinez are but two examples. Mussina went from 20.3% to 63.5% in four years and is expected to receive yet another large jump. If Rolen can quickly distinguish himself from other candidates, he could ride a similar wave of momentum and avoid languishing at the bottom of the ballot for too long.

In that vein, it’s worth watching where he lands relative to Ramirez, Todd Helton, Jeff Kent, and Billy Wagner this year. With four or five of the top candidates exiting the ballot either by election or the expiration of their eligibility, some of these candidates could enter into the top 10 next cycle, which has served as a good indicator of future enshrinement in recent years. From 2007 to 2016, 33 different players ranked in the top 10 of a ballot share at least one time, though Mark McGwire, Bonds, and Clemens all have ties to performance-enhancing drugs. If Martinez and Mussina are both elected, 26 of the 30 candidates without ties to PEDs will already have been elected, and three of the remaining four will be top 10 on this ballot.

Todd Helton (40-of-226, 17.7%)

Todd Helton is perhaps the most intriguing candidate that nobody is paying attention to. In his first ballot appearance, he is performing significantly better than Rolen did pre-announcement a year ago, and the two are within a handful of votes. As touched on last week, the number of votes on any particular ballot has had minimal correlation with the frequency of Helton’s votes. Through 226 public ballots, he has gotten the nod on 25 of 127 (19.7%) ballots on which the maximum 10 spots were utilized. That figure has dropped marginally to 15.2% on all other ballots, and Helton’s name has actually been included most frequently on ballots in the 7-8 vote range (20.6%).

Why is this the case? Helton’s supporters are negatively correlated with Bonds and Clemens voters. On 160 ballots with both Bonds and Clemens, Helton has just 18 votes (11.3%), and just one on a ballot that did not feature 10 checkmarks. However, that ratio has nearly tripled when Bonds and Clemens aren’t chosen; he is 22-for-66 here, a 33.3% share.

The catch here is that, when Bonds and Clemens are excluded, there is the same amount of space available for a Helton vote as there is on a full ballot that includes them. In fact, there may be as much space on a six or seven-player ballot in the former category, as many Bonds and Clemens supporters also vote for Ramirez and/or Sammy Sosa, whereas they are almost always out of consideration for voters who exclude Bonds and Clemens from their ballots.

Since post-announcement reveals have been notoriously unkind to those accused of PED usage, it is very possible that Helton will be the rare candidate who winds up finishing ahead of where he currently tracking.

Jeff Kent (38-of-226, 16.8%)

Kent might be the best example of a candidate who has been lost in the shuffle on the ballot. A player known more for his consistency than anything else, Kent suffers from sharing a ballot with others who were perceived as consummate superstars. He won the 2000 NL MVP Award, but did not record any other top-five finishes.

With just four years of eligibility remaining after 2019, Kent probably won’t ever sniff election by the writers. He does seem like a prime candidate for serious consideration by a small committee somewhere down the road, though.

Billy Wagner (37-of-226, 16.4%)

The time has come for Wagner to make some headway on the ballot. He has flipped 12 voters from a “no” vote to a “yes” vote and has received a checkmark on 16.4% of ballots. Closers typically see a slight boost in the final results, so it is possible that Wagner could wind up at around 20% of the final vote. With the ballot logjam easing, Wagner is a prime candidate to make up a ton of ground in the next few years. He should benefit from a ballot that won’t feature Rivera, Hoffman, or Smith for the first time since Wagner’s 2016 ballot debut.

In theory, Rivera’s tremendous support could draw more attention to the career Wagner authored. Among pitchers to debut in the live-ball era and throw at least 500 innings, Wagner ranks at or near the very top of the leaderboard in virtually every rate stat there is. It stands to reason that Wagner could benefit reasonably well from an internet push, much like Tim Raines was likely aided by Jonah Keri spearheading an artfully-crafted campaign in his honor.

Former Hoffman and Smith voters may well begin to offer some newfound support to Wagner once he is the primary reliever in the spotlight next year.

Gary Sheffield (31-of-226, 13.7%)

As many others have already written, Gary Sheffield has been a victim of the deep pool of candidates throughout his tenure on the ballot. In his first four years of eligibility, Sheffield reeled in 11.7%, 11.6%, 13.3%, and 11.1% shares. Despite 509 home runs and 62.1 WAR, he’s yet to gain much traction with the voters.

Sheffield does have a small link to steroids, but it is unclear how much that suppresses his reputation with the voters. A few other factors may very well be equally (or more) responsible for his lack of support. Like Walker, Sheffield was oft-injured, particularly earlier in his career.

He wore eight different uniforms – none for more than parts of six seasons – and played his most games for the Marlins, a franchise that has lacked the attention paid to to larger-market clubs. The lack of association with one single franchise has likely inhibited his votes to an extent.

Sheffield also comes with a less-than-stellar defensive reputation, one not offset by despite being one of baseball’s most feared hitters – by pitchers and third-base coaches – of his era.

Sheffield probably won’t gain much ground this year, but perhaps when the ballot opens up we will have more knowledge of what exactly has kept his support depressed to this extent. His 18.1% showing on 10-player ballots is up from the 13.3% he sported last year, and going forward that number should continue to trend upward, in all likelihood.

Sammy Sosa (25-of-226, 11.1%)

Sosa was one of four players – along with Kent, Sheffield, and Wagner – who lost support in 2018 from returning voters who had also publicly revealed their ballot the previous year. He did, however, post a decent 4-for-13 showing among public first-time voters and is 3-for-8 so far this year. He has also rebounded slightly from last year, earning back two votes he lost in 2018. He is assured of remaining on the ballot yet again, and he is likely to finish somewhere between 8-10%.

There doesn’t appear to much to look forward to here for Sosa, but perhaps he can eventually surpass the 12.5% high-water mark that he received way back in 2013, his first year of eligibility on the BBWAA ballot. If nothing else, he’s the last candidate guaranteed to return to the 2020 ballot and should stay on for all 10 years before his candidacy moves on to a committee.

Andruw Jones (19-of-226, 8.4%)

One of the biggest questions leading up to the 2018 announcement was whether Andruw Jones would receive the requisite number of votes to remain on the ballot for a second year. He ended up seeing a boost on the ballots which did not reveal prior to the announcement and finished with 7.3%. So far, he has been checked on 19 ballots, with just 12 of his 2018 voters revealing. Nine of those voters voted for him again, and he has also received votes from six voters who did not vote for him in 2018 and four voters who are new to the voting bloc.

He could see modest gains when the results are announced this evening, but if nothing else, he should once again remain above the 5% cutoff for another year.

Andy Pettitte (15-of-226, 6.6%)

Every year, there seems to be one candidate who is in serious danger of being removed from the ballot for further consideration. In 2016, Jim Edmonds fell off the ballot despite 393 home runs and eight Gold Gloves, while in 2017, five World Series rings couldn’t keep Jorge Posada’s candidacy afloat. Last year, the aforementioned Jones skated by with 31 votes, nine above the minimum. With 15 votes on the 226 publicly revealed ballots, Andy Pettitte would appear to be safe at first glance. His vote share has been steadily declining, however; he was on eight of the first 48 ballots and has been on just seven of the last 178. That latter vote share of under 4% has corresponded with more voters from chapters other than New York revealing their ballots, which doesn’t help Pettitte’s chances of clearing the 5% threshold. He only needs six more voters to reach 5%, however, so it is not a reach.

Others

Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, Miguel Tejada, and Michael Young each have two or three votes among published ballots, but none is even at 1.5%. The only candidate in Tracker history to clear the 5% minimum to remain on the ballot with less than 4% at announcement time is Nomar Garciaparra in 2015. He received 5.5% of the vote despite being on only 2.0% of pre-announcement ballots. He gives these four a small amount of hope.