Leading indicator for Baseball Hall of Fame predicts one candidate will be close call

Analyst Harold Reynolds made a bold prediction Monday about the Baseball Hall of Fame: five players will get a call from Cooperstown on Tuesday, when the Baseball Writers' Association of America inductees are revealed live on MLB Network.

Harold thinks we're going to see a BIG class get into the @baseballhall tomorrow ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/rrxw9I03Zv
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) January 20, 2025

Reynolds said he believes Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones will get the call. Two other players, Dave Parker and the late Dick Allen, were chosen by a committee vote last December and will be inducted this summer.

From 1955-2015, the BBWAA did not induct a group larger than three. The only other four-member class was in 1947; the only five-member class was in 1936, the first year of the Hall's existence.

Is Reynolds' prediction feasible?

While mathematically possible, Beltran and Jones appear unlikely to be inducted. With 187 ballots — approximately half — already recorded on Ryan Thibodeaux's indispensable Hall of Fame ballot tracker, only four players (Ichiro, Sabathia, Wagner, Beltran) have been named on 80 percent of ballots. As Thibodeaux noted on Bluesky, no player has reached the 80 percent threshold on election day and failed to make it to Cooperstown.

Jones needs a significant boost to make it. He's currently listed on 72.2 percent of known ballots, and needs to get above 75 percent to gain induction. Typically, unknown ballots list fewer candidates — and that's where things get dicey for Beltran.

In the last five years, four candidates have lost enough support on the unknown ballots (Joe Mauer, Larry Walker, David Ortiz and Todd Helton) to cause them to fall 5.5 percent or more when the final Hall of Fame voting results were announced.

If Beltran and Jones lose 5.5 percent or more, neither will reach the 75 percent threshold.

That would still get Ichiro, Sabathia and Wagner in — the most probable outcome for Tuesday's big reveal.

As a leading indicator, Thibodeaux's tracker is fairly reliable. Jones will likely have to wait another year — apologies to Harold Reynolds — while Beltran will be sweating out the vote on Election Day.

Home/MLB