The 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame voting is complete, with Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, and Billy Wagner getting their calls to the Hall.
While it’s never too early to take a look ahead at who will be added to the ballot in 2026, there’s still so much to learn from the final totals for the 2025 ballot. (Full results can be viewed here.)
Before we dive into the names we’ll likely see on the 2026 Hall of Fame ballot, let’s take a deeper look at the 2025 results. Who fell off the ballot, who saw the biggest jumps in support, and why don’t we know the identity of the lone voter who prevented Ichiro from being unanimously elected?
Who fell off the ballot due to low support?
The reason every Hall of Fame ballot isn’t hundreds of names long is the low support cutoff. Candidates who earn less than 5% of the vote are removed from next year’s ballot. This year, 10 players received less than 5% and have fallen off the ballot.
All 10 of those were in their first year on the ballot, which means that of the 14 players who appeared on the 2025 ballot for the first time, two are in, 10 are gone, and only two will appear again in 2026: Felix Hernandez and Dustin Pedroia, who each earned enough support to stay on the ballot.
Here are the 10 players who will be removed from next year’s ballot:
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Ian Kinsler, 2.5% (10 votes)
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Russell Martin, 2.3% (9 votes)
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Brian McCann, 1.8% (7 votes)
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Troy Tulowitzki, 1.0% (4 votes)
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Curtis Granderson, 0.8% (3 votes)
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Adam Jones, 0.8% (3 votes)
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Carlos González, 0.5% (2 votes)
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Hanley Ramírez, 0%
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Fernando Rodney, 0%
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Ben Zobrist, 0%
Torii Hunter, who received less than 5% of the vote among publicly available ballots, will appear on the 2026 ballot after getting significant support from the non-public ballots. He finished the 2025 voting cycle with 5.1% (20 votes).
Which candidates saw the biggest jumps in support from last year?
Three players saw increases of at least 10 percentage points from their 2024 numbers.
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Carlos Beltran: 70.3%, increase by 13.2% from 2024
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Chase Utley: 39.8%, increase by 11% from 2024
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Andy Pettitte: 27.9%, increase by 14.4% from 2024
Beltran missed induction this year by just 19 votes. Looking at his increase in support and taking into consideration that the Class of 2026 is on the weaker side, Beltran is a good bet to be elected next year. Utley’s increase of 11% is sizable for a second-year candidate, and his case will only get stronger over the next several years.
Pettitte’s support actually doubled from 2024 to 2025, which is surprising because he admitted that he used PEDs (HGH, specifically) during the 2002 and 2004 seasons. Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa all had career numbers that warrant inclusion in the Hall of Fame, but their ties to PEDs kept them from garnering enough support. Pettitte was a very good pitcher, but he was never elite, and combined with his past PED usage, it would seem that would impact his candidacy.
It’s not clear why so many voters decided to check off his box this year. Nostalgia for that era of Yankees baseball might have played a role. The lack of standout pitchers on the ballot might also be part of it. Or it could be that with Clemens, Bonds and Sosa all off the ballot, some voters are reevaluating their feelings toward players from the PED era.
What’s the deal with the one voter who left Ichiro off the ballot?
If you want to know which Baseball Writers Association of America voter left Ichiro off their ballot, don’t hold your breath. It’s likely we’ll never know.
Why? Because BBWAA Hall of Fame voters must opt in to have their ballots shared with the public. While many choose to publicly announce their choices on their own in advance of announcement day, individual voters must check a box on their official paper ballots in order for the Hall of Fame to share them publicly. Otherwise, the ballot remains anonymous.
BBWAA president and Cincinnati Reds beat writer C. Trent Rosecrans posted Tuesday on Bluesky that the BBWAA has voted overwhelmingly for every ballot to be made public and has asked the Hall of Fame to do that. But the Hall of Fame has declined to do so, which highlights the main issue: While the BBWAA votes for the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame itself controls the voting process. Nothing will change without their say-so.
Looking ahead to the Class of 2026 and beyond
A stream of great candidates have appeared on the ballot the past several years, but now we’re heading into a few lean cycles. The next several ballots have very few players who are clear first-ballot Hall of Famers and more players with decent cases for inclusion that will have to build support.
The Hall of Fame doesn’t release the new ballot (with all the new names) until November, which is when voting begins. As of now, we don’t know exactly which players will appear in 2026, 2027 and 2028, but we can take an educated guess by looking at the top players who retired or stopped playing in the corresponding year using lists compiled by Baseball-Reference.
Potential newcomers on the 2026 Hall of Fame ballot:
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SP Cole Hamels
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OF Ryan Braun
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RF Shin-Soo Choo
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3B/1B Edwin Encarnacion
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RF Nick Markakis
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RF Hunter Pence
Potential newcomers on the 2027 Hall of Fame ballot:
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C Buster Posey
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SP Jon Lester
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OF Brett Gardner
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3B/1B Ryan Zimmerman
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3B Kyle Seager
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SP Ervin Santana
Potential newcomers on the 2028 Hall of Fame ballot:
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1B/DH Albert Pujols
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2B Robinson Cano
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SP David Price
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C Yadier Molina
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SP Stephen Strasburg
Potential newcomers on the 2029 Hall of Fame ballot:
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1B/DH Miguel Cabrera
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1B Joey Votto
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SP Zack Greinke
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3B Evan Longoria
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SP Adam Wainwright
With the exception of 2028 — with Pujols, Cano and Molina likely first-ballot Hall of Famers — the next few years of Hall of Fame voting will be very interesting to watch. The lack of big names to be added in 2026 and 2027 means that candidates such as Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Andy Pettitte, Dustin Pedroia and Felix Hernandez should have the opportunity to build support among the writers.
It took Billy Wagner 10 years to get elected to the Hall of Fame after earning just 10.5% of the vote in his first year. It might take a while, but many of these players will have a fighting chance to make it into the Hall.
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