From Blank Ballots To Massive Voting Jumps — Inside The 2026 Baseball HOF Election

Two more players will be joining Jeff Kent in the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. With voting revealed, Carlos Beltrán (84.2%) and Andruw Jones (78.4%) gained inclusion on the 2026 ballot.

Players must achieve 75.0% to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and must receive at least 5.0% of the votes to remain on the ballot. Players can remain on the ballot for a maximum of 10 years.

There are a lot of interesting tidbits in how the ballots went, and how voters have changed their stance given a significant influx of new voters on the 2026 ballot (disclosure, I am one of those and detailed my ballot and criteria in this article).

Here are some facts and figures from the 2026 Baseball Hall of Fame voting:

• There were just eight centerfielders in the Hall of Fame before tonight’s results were revealed. Beltrán and Jones become the first true centerfielders elected since Ken Griffey, Jr in 2016, and Kirby Puckett in 2001. There has never been a year when two centerfielders were voted in in the same year.
• Beyond both playing centerfield, they were very nearly born on the same day. Both were born in April of 1977 (Jones on April 23 and Beltran on April 24)
• Jones has the largest jump in voting from his first year on the ballot to reaching the 75% threshold. In 2018, his first year on the BBWAA ballot, Jones very nearly didn’t get above the 5% to remain on the ballot. He received just 31 votes (7.3%), compared to 78.4% in his ninth year. How does that compare historically?

• Beltrán becomes the sixth Puerto Rican to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, joining Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Alomar, Iván Rodríguez, and Edgar Martínez. Fun fact: Beltran was the recipient of the 2013 Roberto Clemente Award.
• Andruw Jones is the first player in Baseball Hall of Fame history born on the Island of Curaçao (town of Willemstad)
• Jones is the youngest player in MLB history to homer in the postseason and World Series
• There were 11 first-time players who failed to reach the 5% threshold to remain on the ballot in 2027. That’s every first-time player on the 2026 ballot, minus one (Cole Hamels, who received 101 votes, or 23.8% of the ballots). There has never been a year in which all first-time players failed to reach 5%, making the 2026 ballot one of the weakest in history.
• According to the BBWAA, the average ballot in the 2026 election contained 5.77 names, down from 6.77 last year.
• 20.9% of the voters used the maximum 10 slots, down from 24.9% a year ago.
• If you think 100% of the ballots that were mailed out had votes cast on them, think again. Of the 428 ballots sent, 99.3% had votes cast on them. Why is that…?
• There were 11 blank ballots submitted, indicating that those voters saw no one on the ballot worth voting for. That’s the most in the history of Baseball Hall of Fame voting behind only the record 14 blank ballots returned in 2021.

Chase Utley, Felix Hernandez, and maybe Andy Pettitte Are Next

• Mariners Hall of Famer Félix Hernández saw historic gains in voting totals, rising to 46.1% (up from 20.6% in 2025, his first year of eligibility). His rise in percentage is the largest by any returning candidate since 1967, finishing percentage points ahead of Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio (1982-83).

In looking at how much ground Felix Hernandez made, he seems well on the path to eventually gaining inclusion into Cooperstown. But who else seems ripe for as early as 2027 and likely for 2028 along with him?

• In just his third year on the ballot, Chase Utley had the most votes behind Beltran and Jones with 251, or 59.1% of the vote. That was a 19.3% increase over the 39.8% (157 of the 397 ballots cast in 2025).
• The other player to watch is Andy Pettitte, who has been hamstrung in the past by his use of human-growth hormone, a PED. There’s been a shift in the voting body that is taking a lighter view of how he used hGH (he said it was to bounce back from injury), and is often the case, the closer a player is to reaching the max of 10 years on the ballot, voters tend to check in favor of players. Petitte received 206 votes (48.5%), an increase of 20.6% over 2025 when he received 110 votes, or 27.9%. In 2027, Pettitte will appear on his ninth ballot.

The Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are on July 26 in Cooperstown, New York.

Below are the results of the 2026 Baseball Hall of Fame voting