As is becoming tradition, the BBWAA delivered mixed results on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot. There are a lot of good things here, including three deserving new members of Cooperstown, but it’s also not hard to imagine how things could have gone even better.
Let’s start with the three big positives from the election: specifically, the three members of the Cooperstown Class of 2024. Adrian Beltre and Joe Mauer both made it on their first ballots, while Todd Helton finally broke through on his sixth attempt. As a quick update and refresher, we had 385 ballots submitted this year, meaning that to reach the 75% needed for induction, a candidate needed to get 289.