Today, Buster Posey’s focus is on trying to create a winning president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants.
Eleven months from now, however, writers will be assessing the early stages of his career.
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Posey is projected to be the top recruit on the 2027 Hall of Fame ballot. After the results were announced, there were no first-ballot candidates this year. Remaining candidates Carlos Beltran and Andrew Jones were the only candidates to receive votes.
Beltran and Jones are the top vote-getters from 2025, so we weren’t surprised when they received the requisite 75% support from members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. It helps that newcomers to the polls don’t attract much attention. Of this group, only Cole Hamels even cracked the 5% threshold to avoid being removed from future ballots.
Next year, Posey will have a chance to enter the Hall of Fame for the first time. The star catcher is a seven-time All-Star, led the Giants to three World Series championships, is the National League batting champion and the 2012 MVP.
Catcher can be a difficult position to predict when it comes to Hall voting, but Joe Mauer did it right the first time he got the chance two years ago.
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“I remember doing a poll before the votes came out just to gauge how people felt about Moore, and the results were mixed,” said Ryan Thibodaux, who runs an online vote tracker before the results come in each year. “Some people think he’s going to get about 20 percent, some people think he’s going to be elected. I think Posey’s feeling, maybe because of Moore, he’s probably going to be on the first ballot.”
surging launcher
This year, Andy Pettitte’s vote share jumped from 27.9% to 48.5%, and Félix Hernández’s vote share jumped from 20.6% to 46.1%. That doesn’t mean their chances of selection are that similar. Pettit has just two years left on the ballot before the 10-year limit is exhausted. Hernandez, on the other hand, has only fought twice and had plenty of time.
Voters have been pretty open lately about considering the top starting pitchers on the ballot. CC Sabathia was a first-ballot candidate last year, and now Pettit and Hernandez are seeing big jumps in support. Hamels took part in the voting for the first time and received 23.8% support.
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Hamels’ concern is that guys like Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, who each have three Cy Young Awards, will end up on the ballot. If you compare other starters directly to these three, they’ll have a tougher time.
But Hernandez may step in before that becomes an issue.
top returner
Chase Utley, who received the highest vote share this year, did not reach 75%, but his vote share increased from 39.8% to 59.1%. This is only his third time on the ballot.
“It looks like Utley is getting into a position where he could be elected as soon as next year, even though a 16% jump isn’t going to be easy,” Thibodaux said. “If he doesn’t actually quite get there, he might get close.”
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last chance
Only one player will be in Year 10 at the next ballot. That’s Omar Vizquel, who got just 18.4 percent this year.
The defensive shortstop had an approval rating of 52.6% in 2020, but his approval rating plummeted after he was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife. He was also sued over sexual harassment allegations from a former minor league bat boy.