Updates on Hall of Fame voting for Dec. 20th

The 2023 Hall of Fame ballot has been mailed out to members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) and are to be completed and sent back by the end of the month. Results of the voting will be revealed on January 24th next year, and any players meeting the 75% threshold, will be announced and players failing to be on at least 5% of ballots are kicked off for next year.

Player that played for at least ten seasons and been retired for at least five seasons are eligible to be on the ballot. Members of the BBWAA who have been baseball writers for at least ten years get a vote the following year after their tenth season. Each member can vote for as many as ten players each year, or vote for no players as they see fit. For all the official rules, you can visit the Hall of Fame website to read more about the voting process.

For anyone that uses Twitter, Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) is a must follow this time of year for his efforts posting updates of ballots. Thibodaux and his team do a great job uploading ballots as they come in and even tweets images for every ballot to show if votes for players were added, dropped, or the same as last year for the voters. For those who are not on Twitter, Thibodaux’s voting tracker can be found here and is continuously updated when ballots are sent in. Votes has started coming in more and more often as we get closer to the voting deadline, so if you haven’t been following along, here’s your first update on how the results are looking. As we get closer to the announcement in January, we will have another update as well.

Todd Helton returns to the ballot for his fifth year and is joined by former relief pitcher Huston Street who makes his first appearance. With the ballots returned so far, Huston Street has not had a single vote yet, which is unfortunate, but is still fun to see him on the ballot. Last voting season, Helton received 205 votes, good for 52% of the vote and +7% from 2021 and was only 91 votes short. So far, he is off to a good start with the 29 ballots that have been submitted as of Monday morning.

It’s still early with only about 7% of the estimated vote in yet, but Helton has already gained nine votes from writers that did not have him on their ballots last year, which is the most by any player so far. With 78.6% of the vote, Helton does currently meet the induction threshold along with Scott Rolen.

So is a trip to Cooperstown, New York next July a good gift idea for any Rockies’ fans on your list this Holliday season? The vote this year maybe close, but pre buying a trip might be optimistic at this stage. Let’s compare the changes from the past few years to help us forecast this year. Below is a table showing the percent votes Helton has received and the change from the previous year.

In 2020 and 2021, Helton increased by double digit percents and was able to get more than half the votes last year. With the backlog of players on the ballot from the controversial steroid users (i.e. Barry Bonds, Curt Schilling, etc.), Helton was did not see as big of a jump last year. With those players now off the ballot, some votes may be freed up for Helton and a major jump would not be unexpected. It looks as though Todd Helton have the best shot at getting inducted this year, but will both need to see more votes to make. The private votes are usually unexpected with players getting less votes on those ballots than public ones, so determining the final amount is difficult. Surprisingly though, last year Helton was only -0.5% from public to private ballots last year according to Thibodaux’s tracker, which does give some optimism as Helton sits at 79% at the time of writing this. Helton has a good chance to be inducted this year, and if not this year, 2024 should be the year that he gets in.

Who do you want to see in the Hall of Fame? Use the blank ballot below or comment below, and show us who you got!

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Rockies trade Joe to Pirates for Minor League righty | MLB.com

Sunday evening, the Colorado Rockies traded fan favorite Connor Joe to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Minor League RHP Nick Garcia. Joe was drafted by the Pirates in 2014 and rejoins his first organization. Garcia, a third round pitch in 2020, pitched 25 games at the High-A level in 2022 going 4-4 with a 3.66 ERA while striking out 109 in 113 innings. The trade clears a spot on the Rockies’ 40-man roster and adds pitching depth to the farm system. The past two seasons, Joe played a variety of positions for the Rockies as a solid utility player at first base, outfield, and DH. Connor Joe’s inspirational story of battling cancer and returning to play baseball again and his outgoing personality made him an instant fan favorite in Colorado.

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