First-timer Utley gets 28.8% of HOF vote; Wagner 5 votes shy
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PHILADELPHIA -- Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Bobby Abreu have a long way to go to get to Cooperstown, N.Y.
Billy Wagner nearly got there.
Wagner, who pitched for the Phillies from 2004-05, fell five votes short of being inducted this summer into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His name appeared on 73.8% of ballots cast by eligible Baseball Writers' Association of America voters, the Hall of Fame announced on Tuesday night. It needed to appear on 75%. Adrián Beltré (95.1%), Todd Helton (79.7%) and Joe Mauer (76.1%) made the cut.
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Wagner got 284 votes. He needed 289.
It was Wagner’s ninth year of eligibility on the BBWAA ballot. He gets one final shot next year.
Utley’s name appeared on 28.8% of ballots, while Abreu and Rollins each appeared on 14.8%. It was Utley’s first year of eligibility, Abreu’s fifth and Rollins’ third.
They will get more chances, as long as they appear on at least 5% of ballots every year.
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Over the past few weeks, Utley had tracked around 40% via publicly available ballots, according to Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame ballot tracker. He got 39.4 percent in Thibodaux’s final update on Tuesday, which included 218 known ballots. But 385 total ballots were cast and many of the unknown 167 will remain anonymous.
Some will be made public within the next two weeks.
The BBWAA has tried the past few years to make all ballots public for accountability’s sake, but those efforts have been rebuffed.
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Rollins has moved from 9.4% in 2022 to 12.9% in '23 to 14.8% this year. He is on an upward trajectory, but he will need to make much greater gains in coming years. The same can be said for Abreu, who has yo-yoed in recent years. He received 5.5% in '20, 8.7% in '21, 8.6% in '22, 15.4% in '23 and 14.8% this year.
Utley’s solid first year might bode well for the future. Former Phillies third baseman Scott Rolen appeared on 10.2% of ballots in his first year in 2018. He received 76.3% in his sixth year in '23.