The 2024 Baseball Writers of America Baseball Hall of Fame ballots have been announced – and congratulations to Adrian Beltre, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer – worthy candidates all. In this post, I’ll be taking a look at the differences (and similarities) between the official BBWAA results and Baseball Roundtable’s unofficial reader/fan balloting. YOu’ll find some (handy?) charts at the end of the post.
Spreading Out the Love
The 83 reader respondents and the 385 official BBWAA voters voted for about an equal number of players per ballot. The writers averaged 7.0 players per ballot, the readers 6.9 (a year ago, those figures were 5.9 and 6.2, respectively). The readers, however, spread out their support a bit more. Among readers 14 of the 26 players on the ballot (53.8%) got at least 20 percent of the vote, as compared to ten (38.5%) for the writers.
Getting that Magic 75 Percent
Among readers, only two players received the 75-percent support required in the BBWAA voting – First-time candidate Adrian Beltre (90.4%) and Todd Helton (79.7% in his sixth year on the ballot). Coming very close were first-timer Joe Mauer (73.5%) and nine-timer Billy Wagner (74.7%.) The most significant difference, of course, was that Mauer got the necessary 75-percent support among the writers, but fell short among Roundtable readers. In reality, it was not much of a difference. Mauer got 76.1 percent of the writer vote and 73.5 percent among Roundtable reader respondents. (Two more reader votes would have put him at 75.9%.)
The top four players on both tabulations were: Beltre, Helton, Joe Mauer and Wagner (although Wagner and Mauer finished 3-4 with the writers and flipped to 4-3 for the readers.)
The biggest variable came at number five, where Gary ‘Sheffield got a boost from the writers in his final year on the ballot, going from 55,0% to 63.9, but still falling short. Sheffield finished ninth on the reader voting at 32.5%.
Other notable variations:
- First-timer Bartolo Colon long a fan favorite, got 21.7 percent of the reader vote to just 1.3 percent from the writers;
- Chase Utley got 28.8 percent support from the writers, but just 12.5 percent from readers.
- Matt Holliday fell of the ballot with only 1.0 percent the writers, but got 20.5 percent of the reader vote.
Gainers and Losers
The biggest gainers on the fan ballot were Billy Wagner (up 17.1 percentage points) and Andy Pettitte (up 12.9). The largest declines were Francisco Rodriguez (down 30.1 percentage points) and Alex Rodriguez (down 19.8). Note: Francisco Rodriguez was a bit outlier in 2023, with 42.4 percent in the reader balloting and just 10.8 percent from writers. Things were more aligned in 2023, 7.8 percent from the writers and 11.3% from the readers.
In the official BBWAA voting the movement was not as notable. biggest gainers were Carlos Beltran (up 10.6 percentage points) and Gary Sheffield (up 8.9) while the largest decline was attributed to Andy Pettitte (down 3.5 percentage points).
Off The Ballot
Things were pretty even here. Eight players receive less than the five percent needed to stay on the official ballot, while seven fell below that mark on the reader ballot. A couple of differences:
- David Wright made the cut on the writers’ ballot (6.2%), but fell just short on the readers’ poll (4,9);
- Bartolo Colon, as noted earlier, did well with readers, but got only 1.3 percent from writers. The same was true of Matt Holliday, with 20.5 percent from readers, just one percent from writers.
Who Missing?
When asked which players no longer on the ballot, they would like to see in the Hall of Fame, readers named 33 different players. Here’s a list of the players mentioned on more than one reader ballot (number of mentions in parentheses).
Barry Bonds (9)
Roger Clemens (9)
Jeff Kent (9)
Lou Whitaker (6)
Pete Rose (5)
Don Mattingly (3)
Mark McGwire (3)
Dick Allen (2)
Dwight Evans (2)
Bobby Grich (2)
Ron Guidry (2)
Keith Hernandez (2)
Thurman Munson (2)
Luis Tiant (2)
Players with one mention: Ken Boyer, Jim Creighton, Bill Dahlen, Rap Dixon, Curt Flood, Steve Garvey, Joe Jackson, Tommy John, Kenny Lofton, Roger Maris, Dale Murphy, Joe Nathan, Al Oliver, Rafael Palmeiro, Dave Parker, Johan Santana, Curt Schilling, Urban Shocker, Sammy Sosa.
Side Note: Still waiting for confirmation, but the winner of the prize drawing was a Pennsylvania reader. The prize includes a 1990 Topps Set; A 1986 Topps Traded Set; a Bill Murray minor-league (in uniform) bobblehead; a “The Wizard” replica Cardinals’ Nickname Day jersey; and 1960’s Coke and Fresca bottlecaps with Willie Mays and Bill Mazeroski on the inside.
Primary resources: baseball-reference.com
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