[Thibodaux] Félix Hernandez ties Luis Aparicio for biggest all-time year over year gain. Utley and Pettitte also join the list.
Felix fans have been ecstatic over this jump.
This basically assures that he will get in the HoF in the future.
My best bet would be 2030. An extremely weak ballot coming off a busy 2028 and loaded 2029 ballot. Felix should gain some more next year too as Beltran and Jones are off the ballot and the only 2 names added on who will likely get real consideration is Posey and Lester
Kinda insane how much the strength of ballot affects the voting. Seems like voters feel required to vote for a certain number of people even if they don’t think there are deserving candidates. Hard to imagine Felix, utley, Wright, pedroia, etc. getting so much support if there were a couple 1st ballot newcomers. Feels like an issue with the voting system tbh
Obviously strength of ballot effects voting results but this year had alot of first time voters. Apparently 2016 had a lot of new writers join the BBWA and this was there first time getting to vote.
I think there are a few different things going on:
There’s definitely some ongoing re-evaluation of pitcher standards to make the HoF that is benefitting Felix, Cole Hamels, and Andy Pettitte all simultaneously.
In years where there are fewer obvious choices, voters have to spend more time evaluating the candidates, and land on voting for some candidates they might not have otherwise.
As you say, many voters feel compelled to not “waste” their ballots, and always vote for at least X candidates
Santana had a much stronger case and fell off first ballot
Next years ballot is crazy weak. Bodes well for Utley and especially Buster Posey I think
Surprising Aparicio’s perception changed that much. 41 to 84 percent of the votes in 2 years.
1982 was Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson’s first year on the ballot. They were going to get all of the attention that year.
And 9 people for Aaron and 45 people for Robinson saw all that attention and decided they weren’t worth it.
Imagine not voting for Hank Aaron