Beltre, Mauer, Utley among newbies on Hall ballot
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David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior Writer
Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer and Chase Utley headline the list of newcomers to the 26-player Baseball Writers’ Association of America Hall of Fame ballot, it was announced Monday.
Players must receive 75% of the vote to gain induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, with the top holdovers from last year’s vote including Todd Helton (72%), Billy Wagner (68%), Andruw Jones (58%), Gary Sheffield (55%) and Carlos Beltran (46.5%).
It’s the 10th and final year on the ballot for Sheffield, while Wagner is on the ballot for the ninth time.
Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, both of whom received PED suspensions during their careers, also return to the ballot.
Beltran returns for the second time after his vote total might have been held down in his initial appearance due to his involvement in the 2017 Houston Astros cheating scandal.
Other newcomers are David Wright, Bartolo Colon, Matt Holliday, Jose Bautista, Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Reyes, Victor Martinez, James Shields and Brandon Phillips.
A look at the top newcomers:
• Beltre should be a lock as a first-year candidate after finishing with 3,166 hits, 477 home runs and 93.5 WAR while capturing five Gold Gloves. He ranks third in WAR among third basemen, behind only Mike Schmidt and Eddie Mathews. He had his career season with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, when he led the National League with 48 home runs and finished second in the MVP voting, but his best run came in his 30s with the Texas Rangers from 2011 to 2018, when he had four 30-homer seasons and hit .304.
• Mauer is the first of the trio of catchers from the late 2000s and 2010s with strong credentials to hit the ballot, with Buster Posey and Yadier Molina coming in future years. Mauer has the highest career WAR (55.2) among the three and ranks ninth among all players who played at least half their games at catcher. The eight in front of him are all Hall of Famers, as are the two immediately behind. Mauer won three batting titles, including a remarkable .365 average with the Minnesota Twins in 2009 when he won the MVP Award. No player has hit for that high of an average since. Mauer should be viewed as a solid-to-strong candidate, but concussions forced him to move to first base his final five seasons and, unlike Posey and Molina, he never won a World Series, so he’s unlikely to make it on the first ballot.
• Utley promises to generate a contentious Hall of Fame debate. He was a stat-head favorite as one of the top all-around players in the majors from 2005 to 2010, when he averaged 7.6 WAR per season, and his 64.5 career total ranks 14th among second basemen. His lifetime counting stats are a little thin, however, as he finished with 1,885 hits, 259 home runs and 1,025 RBIs. His WAR total also relies on some extremely positive defensive metrics, even though Utley was never considered an elite defender while active and never won a Gold Glove.
• Wright was on a Hall of Fame path with 46.5 career WAR through his age-30 season, but back injuries shortened his career and he played just 211 games after turning 31. His counting stats aren’t much different from Utley’s with 1,777 hits, 242 home runs and 970 RBIs, but he might not get the 5% of the vote needed to remain on the ballot.
• Colon became a fan favorite late in his career, and he finished with 247 wins and won a Cy Young Award with the Angels in 2005, but his career ERA of 4.12 is a little high for serious consideration.
• Holliday played in three World Series with the Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals and was MVP runner-up in 2007, when he led the NL in batting, average, RBIs, hits and doubles. He finished with a .299 career average and seven All-Star appearances, but his career numbers are a little short (44.5 WAR, 2,096 hits, 316 home runs) for a corner outfielder.
• Bautista had a nice run from 2010 to 2015 as the game’s top power hitter — he led the AL with 54 home runs in 2010 and 43 in 2011, and his 227 home runs over those six seasons were 28 more than Miguel Cabrera to lead all hitters — but he was late bloomer and didn’t do enough on the front end or back end of his career, and Hall of Fame voters tend to reward longevity over peak value.
• Gonzalez (43.5 WAR) falls into the “Hall of Very Good” category, with just over 2,000 hits, 317 home runs and seven 100-RBI seasons, but the offensive bar is high for first basemen.
Of the holdovers, Helton will likely get elected after coming so close in last year’s vote. Wagner also has a strong chance after improving from 51% to 68%. Sheffield saw a 15% increase last season but will need to make a 20% leap to get in.
Other holdovers are Omar Vizquel, Andy Pettitte, Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Mark Buehrle, Francisco Rodriguez and Torii Hunter. After years of electing multiple candidates, the BBWAA has elected just one each of the past two years — Scott Rolen in 2023; David Ortiz in 2022 — and didn’t elect anyone in 2021.
Earlier, the Hall of Fame announced its Contemporary Era Committee ballot, which this year considered managers, executive and umpires. The eight candidates on that ballot are managers Jim Leyland, Lou Piniella, Cito Gaston and Davey Johnson; executives Hank Peters and Bill White (who was also a fine player); and umpires Joe West and Ed Montague.
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Bill Connelly
The 2025 College Football Playoff got underway in Norman, Oklahoma, on Friday night, and we’ve already seen a first. After all four home teams won by demonstrative margins in last year’s first round, Alabama became the first road team to prevail in a playoff game with a stirring comeback against Oklahoma and a 34-24 win.
Here are the main takeaways. We will update this with each completed game.
What just happened?
Oklahoma’s offense only had 20 minutes in it. The Sooners were perfect out of the gate, bursting to a 17-0 lead against an Alabama team that looked completely unprepared for the moment. But the Crimson Tide adjusted and rallied, and OU had only a brief answer. From 17 down, Bama outscored its hosts by a 34-7 margin from there.
We use the word “momentum” far too much in football, but this was an extremely momentum-based game.
1. Over the first 19 minutes, Oklahoma went up 17-0 while outgaining Bama by a stunning 181-12 margin. It could have been worse, too, as the Sooners’ Owen Heinecke came within millimeters of a blocked punt that might have produced a safety or a touchdown.
2. Over the next 21 minutes, Bama outscored the Sooners 27-0, outgaining them, 194-59. Freshman Lotzeir Brooks caught two touchdown passes — the first on a fourth-and-2 to finally get Bama on the board (after he caught a huge third-down pass earlier in the drive), and the second TD came on a 30-yard lob that put the Tide up for good. The Tide defense got pressure on John Mateer, and his footwork and composure vanished. An egregious pick-six thrown directly to Zabien Brown tied the game, and Bama scored the first 10 points of the second half as well.
0:58
Zabien Brown stuns OU with game-tying pick-six before halftime
Zabien Brown takes a big-time interception 50 yards to the house to tie the score before halftime.
OU responded briefly, cutting the margin to three points early in the fourth quarter thanks to a 37-yard Deion Burks touchdown. But the Sooners’ offense couldn’t do enough, and kicker Tate Sandell, the Groza Award winner, missed two late field goals to assure a Bama win.
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Tate Sandell’s back-to-back FG misses help Alabama secure 1st-round win
Tate Sandell misses a pair of late field goals as Alabama holds on to beat Oklahoma 34-24 in the CFP first round.
Impact plays
Oklahoma beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa in November — in the game that eventually certified the Sooners’ CFP bid — thanks to a pick-six and special teams dominance. But the tables turned completely in Norman. Brown’s pick six was huge, and special teams completely abandoned the Sooners, both with Sandell’s misses and with a botched punt in the second quarter.
The botched punt was actually the second of a two-part sequence that turned the game against the Sooners. First, Mateer passed up an easy third-and-3 conversion to throw downfield to a wide open Xavier Robinson, but he short-armed the pass and dropped it. On the very next snap, punter Grayson Miller dropped the ball moving into his punting motion. Bama’s Tim Keenan III recovered the ball at the OU 30, and while OU’s defense held the Tide to a field goal, what could have been a 24-3 OU lead turned instead into a 17-10 advantage. That set the table for Brown’s pick-six and everything that followed.
The blown early lead leaves Oklahoma with quite the ignominious feat: In the history of the College Football Playoff, teams are 28-2 with a 17-point lead: OU is 0-2, and everyone else is 28-0. Ouch.
See you next fall, Sooners
We knew that whenever Oklahoma’s season ended, offense would be the primary reason. The Sooners survived playing with almost no margin for error for most of the year. Their No. 49 ranking in offensive SP+ was the worst of any CFP team, but they got enough defense (third in defensive SP+), special teams (21st in special teams SP+) and quality red zone play to overcome it.
The Sooners’ defense still played well on Friday night — Bama gained only 260 total yards (4.8 per play) — but the special teams miscues put more pressure on the offense to come through, and after a brilliant start, it ran out of steam. Mateer began the game 10-for-15 for 132 yards with a touchdown, 26 rushing yards and a rushing TD, but his last 31 pass attempts gained just 149 yards with five sacks and the pick, and his last nine non-sack rushes gained just 15 yards.
Brent Venables therefore heads into the offseason with some decisions to make. OU’s offense technically improved after the big-money additions of coordinator Ben Arbuckle and Mateer, but Mateer was scattershot before his midseason hand injury and poor after it. Do the Sooners run it back with the same roster core, hoping that better health and a theoretically improved run game can give the defense what it needs to take OU to the next level? Does Venables hit the reset button again? Can he ever get all the arrows pointed in the right direction at the same time?
What’s next
Alabama’s reward for the comeback win is a trip out West: The Tide will meet unbeaten and top-seeded Indiana in the Rose Bowl on January 1. Bama’s defense will obviously face a stiffer test from Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza and the Hoosiers attack, but Bama’s defense has been mostly up for the test this season. Their ability to pull an upset will be determined by Ty Simpson and the Alabama passing game.
Simpson began Friday night’s win just 2-for-6 with a sack, and while he improved from there and didn’t throw any interceptions — his final passing line: 18-for-29 for 232 yards, two touchdowns and four sacks (6.0 yards per attempt) — his footwork still betrayed him quite a bit over the course of the evening, and he misfired on quite a few passes. Oklahoma’s pass rush is fearsome, but Indiana’s defense ranks seventh in sack rate itself, and with almost no blitzing whatsoever. The Hoosiers generate pressure and clog passing lanes, and they held Oregon‘s Dante Moore and Ohio State‘s Julian Sayin to 5.1 yards per dropback with 11 sacks and two touchdowns to three picks. Bama will be an underdog for a reason.
That said, kudos to the Tide for getting off the mat. They were lifeless at the start, missing tackles and blocks and looking as unprepared as they did in their season-opening loss to Florida State. But Brooks’ play-making lit the fuse, and Bama charged back.
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