One year ago, the Hall of Fame conversation centered on three players: the near-unanimous Ichiro Suzuki, clear first-ballot choice CC Sabathia, and long-deferred Billy Wagner.
The 2026 cycle is another matter. We’ve arrived at a page in the Cooperstown story without an obvious main character.
Welcome to the “Comfort Plus” ballot, with extra elbow room for voters to advocate for candidates previously overshadowed by slam-dunk first-timers or urgent, last-chance cases.
Despite the newfound flexibility, it’s not clear the writers will elect anyone at all.
Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones earned my votes again, after receiving 70.3% and 66.2%, respectively, in 2025. Beltrán is one of the greatest switch-hitters in baseball history, with a superb postseason résumé to amplify his credentials. Jones won 10 Gold Gloves in center field while playing for a franchise that dominated the National League for a decade.
Yet the possibility of Jeff Kent standing alone on the stage in July remains real, unless a sufficient number of voters have changed their views since last winter.
I am a “Big Hall” voter, because it can take time to place players into proper historical context; the way to ensure they remain under consideration is to continue voting for them. Hall of Famer Scott Rolen, who debuted at 10.2%, is proof that worthy inductees can have modest beginnings at the polls.
In keeping with that philosophy, I checked boxes beside 10 names on my 2026 ballot.
Among that group, I’d like to focus here on Hernández and Hamels, because they represent a segment of the ballot — starting pitchers — I’ve spent considerable time pondering.
Sabathia clearly met the Hall of Fame standard. Among more modern starters, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander seem destined for Cooperstown. Zack Greinke likely is, too. But in an era of restricted innings and de-emphasis on pitching wins, where will we draw the line?
Hernández finished among the Top 10 in Cy Young Award voting six times in a seven-year span from 2009 through 2015; he won the honor in 2010 and finished second twice. That’s the definition of a dominant peak.
King Félix maintained a higher career strikeout rate than Sabathia, but durability was the difference on aggregate. Sabathia logged 3,577 1/3 innings, compared to 2,729 2/3 for Hernández. In the end, Sabathia led Félix by over 500 strikeouts.
Hernández was only 33 years old when he threw what proved to be his final Major League pitch on Sept. 26, 2019. Had he avoided late-career injuries, a 36-year-old Félix might have been part of the 2022 Mariners that ended a two-decade playoff drought. Instead, he retired without ever appearing in the postseason.
Players only have so much control over postseason opportunities. The better standard is whether they had historically significant careers within their respective eras. During Hernández’s career from 2005 through 2019, only three pitchers recorded more strikeouts: Verlander, Scherzer, and Hamels.
Hamels, in fact, is the player whose career most closely resembles that of Hernández, according to the Baseball-Reference.com statistical database. Their innings and strikeout totals are very similar. Hamels’ ERA+ is superior (123 vs. 117 for Félix), and he has an estimable 3.41 ERA over 100 1/3 postseason innings — including National League Championship Series and World Series MVP honors in 2008.
Jon Lester and Adam Wainwright will appear on future BBWAA ballots, and their candidacies will rightly be bolstered by their October achievements. Hamels — who threw a similar number of innings to Lester and Wainwright — deserves the same consideration.
In time, there will be distinctions drawn among the group. For now, my ballot affirms that Hamels and Hernández were among the defining pitchers of an era in which the goalposts for greatness were moved by forces beyond their control.
This winter, for perhaps the only time, the caliber of the BBWAA ballot grants me the latitude to make that statement. I’m more than happy to use it.
