Shortly after the World Series ended in November, eligible BBWAA writers around the country (including one of our own) began to receive their ballots to determine the 2026 class for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and they had until the end of 2025 to mail them in. Former San Francisco Giants second baseman and MVP Jeff Kent was voted in by the Hall’s separate Eras Committee in December, and he won’t be alone on the podium in Cooperstown during the 2026 induction ceremonies this summer.

Joe Buck will receive the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting and longtime Cleveland writer Paul Hoynes will be honored with the newly-renamed Platinum Pen Award. As just revealed in a Tuesday night announcement on MLB Network by Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch, they’ll all be joined by the newest BBWAA inductees: Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones.

Purely by the numbers, Beltrán was always an excellent candidate for Cooperstown, as the switch-hitting center fielder finished his 20-year career in 2017 with 435 homers, 312 stolen bases, 2,725 hits, and 67.4 fWAR. He follows the legendary footsteps of Roberto Clemente in becoming the sixth Puerto Rican to make the Hall of Fame, joining first baseman Orlando Cepeda, second baseman Roberto Alomar, catcher Iván Rodríguez, and DH Edgar Martinez (born in New York but raised by his grandparents in Puerto Rico).

A second-round prep pick by the Kansas City Royals in the 1995 MLB Draft, he zoomed through the minors and became a near-unanimous pick for 1999 AL Rookie of the Year. He largely toiled in anonymity on some bad Royals teams until the contending Houston Astros traded for him in June 2004, just before he made the first of nine career All-Star appearances with a 30/30 season. Beltrán excelled down the stretch as Houston won a Wild Card spot and then seized the national spotlight with a postseason for the ages. Even though the Astros didn’t make the World Series and got eliminated by the St. Louis Cardinals in a seven-game NLCS, Beltrán tied a then-playoff record with 8 homers in 12 games, hitting a hellacious .435/.536/1.022. He certainly did his part.

A coveted free agent that offseason, Beltrán signed a seven-year, $119 million contract with the New York Mets and had the best season of his career in 2006. He hit a new high with 41 homers, won his first of three consecutive Gold Gloves in center, and finished fourth for NL MVP as the Mets at last toppled the Atlanta Braves to the NL East. Beltrán’s bat was electric again come October with a .978 OPS, but the only at-bat that most fans remembered was the one that ended the Mets’ run in Game 7 of the NLCS, as Beltrán struck out looking against the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright with the bases loaded and the winning run in scoring position.

Thanks to some late-season collapses in Queens, it would be several years before Beltrán got another crack at a title. He joined those same Cardinals in free agency following the 2011 campaign, kept hitting in October, and made his first World Series appearance in 2013 when the Cards took down the up-and-coming Los Angeles Dodgers for the pennant after Beltrán walked off Game 1. The Boston Red Sox won in six games, so despite Beltrán’s .982 career playoff OPS for St. Louis, he had to make a return trip to Houston to finally win it all.

Signed at age 40 by the Astros to be a DH and team leader after stints with the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers, Beltrán’s production finally faltered. But his teammates pushed him over the finish line with a seven-game over the Dodgers. Beltrán rode off into the sunset as a World Series champion and was so well-respected that the Yankees interviewed him for their open managerial job less than a month after his career ended. He didn’t get it, but the Mets hired him as their skipper on November 2019.

Beltrán’s post-career momentum came to screeching halt that same offseason, when news broke of the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scandal. The 23 then-active players who participated in the scandal were controversially granted immunity to help MLB’s investigation, and that contingent notably excluded the now-retired Beltrán. Indeed, he was the one named player in MLB’s final report, released in January 2020, specifically noted among a general group of players who “discussed that the team could improve on decoding opposing teams’ signs and communicating the signs to the batter.”

Beltrán was fired by the Mets before the team even reported for spring training, and the man who was once considered a near-lock for the Hall of Fame appeared on less than half of all 389 ballots during his first year of eligibility in 2023. Since then, however, the BBWAA’s collective stance has softened on Beltrán, and he garnered 57.1 percent in 2024 before missing induction in 2025 by only 19 votes. Now, he is a Hall of Famer, appearing on 84.2 percent of ballots.

This will be a big year for defensively superb center fielders with power who were born in the Caribbean in late April 1977. Andruw Jones was in fact born just one day before Beltrán, though at the time, no one from Curaçao had ever played in the majors. If Hensley Meulens opened the door in 1989, Jones fully broke it down seven years later (All-Stars like Kenley Jansen, Andrelton Simmons, Jurickson Profar, and Ozzie Albies would follow). A preternaturally gifted prospect ranked No. 1 overall by Baseball America in 1996, Jones was only 19 when he made his MLB debut for the defending champion Braves that August. Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox was impressed enough by the teenager that he put him on the playoff roster, and the presence of the DH in Game 1 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium encouraged Cox to give Jones a start in the outfield.

Atlanta reaped the benefits when Jones immediately homered off Andy Pettitte to become the youngest player to homer in a Fall Classic, surpassing no less a luminary than New York’s own Mickey Mantle. He went yard in his second at-bat too, joining 1972 Oakland A’s catcher Gene Tenace as the only players in MLB history to do so.

Jones’ 1.250 OPS on the game’s greatest stage went for naught as the Yankees came back to win in six games. He would never be a World Series champion (losing another to New York in 1999), but for the next decade, there was no better center fielder in baseball than the prodigy in Atlanta.

From 1997-2007, Jones led the Braves’ offense alongside another Jones and hit .263/.343/.498 with 363 homers, a 114 wRC+, and 64.2 fWAR — a figure that trailed only Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. The only center fielder within even 15 fWAR of Jones in that span was Jim Edmonds (50.7). Jones made five All-Star teams and narrowly lost the NL MVP to Albert Pujols in 2005, the last of Atlanta’s 14 consecutive division titles and a year that saw him clobber 51 homers to set a then-Braves record. His potent bat helped him reach 434 career homers (a top-50 in MLB history at the time his career ended), but what made Jones stand out was his glove. Jones has a legitimate case as the best defensive center fielder to ever play the game, and he won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves from 1998-2007.

The primary on-field issue with Jones’ Hall of Fame case was that his career was basically over after that stretch. His bat had dipped a bit in 2007, and he was both out of shape and absolutely horrible for the Dodgers upon signing with LA for his age-31 season in 2008. He found some success in a reduced bat-first role for three different teams from 2009-12, and he even a 132 wRC+ with in 77 games for the Yankees in 2011. The next year, though, he stumbled to an 89 wRC+, failed to make the playoff roster, and in a legitimately alarming off-field incident, Jones was arrested on Christmas Day 2012 for domestic violence against his wife. They later divorced, and plenty of voters who might’ve taken up his statistical Hall of Fame case understandably passed on voting for him. After two seasons in Japan with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, he was done. Jones was only 35 at the time of his last career MLB game.

Jones debuted on a very crowded Hall of Fame ballot in 2018 and failed to garner even eight percent of the BBWAA vote during his first two years. As the top of the classes thinned out and more former teammates and rivals began to ardently make the case for Jones, he took big jumps in voting share, and his largest leap yet in 2023 brought him up from 41.4 percent to 58.1. He garnered just under two-thirds of the vote in 2025, and now in his penultimate year on the ballot, he has passed the three-fourths hurdle at 78.4 percent and joined former Atlanta teammates Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones, and Fred McGriff in Cooperstown.

The next-closest Hall of Fame candidate from this year’s crop was a man beloved by the City of Philadelphia, Chase Utley, at 59.1 percent. A somewhat-late start to his career led to a case that’s not as strong on counting stats, but like Jones, he was among baseball’s elite at his peak and he still accumulated 61.5 fWAR, one of just 17 second basemen in MLB history to do so. A remarkable 43.6 of that total came from 2005-2010, when he hit .298/.388/.523 with 162 homers and a 136 wRC+ as the Phillies won it all in 2008 and nearly repeated in 2009. Utley will be in great position to make it to Cooperstown in 2027, when the only players seemingly worthy of consideration who will be joining the ballot are Buster Posey and Jon Lester.

One of Utley’s teammates from those Philly teams debuted on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot: Cole Hamels (23.8 percent). The 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP was a durable, productive southpaw and four-time All-Star from 2006-19 before a sudden onset of injuries ended his career. He easily fared the best of the newcomer candidates. Hamels had a strong debut, and two other pitching holdovers made great gains as well in Andy Pettitte (48.5 percent) and Félix Hernández (46.1 percent). Starting pitcher standards have changed in recent years with how MLB teams have used starters as the century has progressed, so they’re longer look; given that, Mark Buehrle (20 percent) probably should have come closer to their percentages, but he will remain on the ballot next year anyway. So will Bobby Abreu, Dustin Pedroia, Jimmy Rollins, David Wright, Omar Vizquel, Francisco Rodríguez, and Torii Hunter, who all cleared that five-percent threshold.

Finally, there’s the matter of Alex Rodriguez (40 percent) and Manny Ramirez (38.8 percent). Both are obvious Hall of Famers by the numbers, but they also both have two long PED suspensions on their records. Although a high number of voters are willing to look past that (if not only because MLB already doled out the agreed-upon punishment and the man who looked the other way on PEDs for so long, commissioner Bud Selig, has a Hall of Fame plaque), they’ve never come particularly close to winning over even 50 percent. A-Rod will continue to hang around on the ballot next year. This will be the last for Manny, however, as this is his last year of BBWAA eligibility. Given how others with PED ties have fared on Eras Committees, it’s hard to envision a future where Manny or A-Rod get their days in the sun.

The BBWAA’s full balloting can be found below.