These days, Buster Posey’s focus is on trying to build a winner as president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants.
Eleven months from now, however, writers will be evaluating an earlier part of his Major League Baseball career — the part that took place on the field.
Posey is expected to be the top newcomer on the 2027 ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. There were no first-ballot inductees this year when the results were announced Tuesday night as holdover candidates Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones were the only ones voted in.
Beltrán and Jones were the top returning vote recipients from 2025, so it wasn’t a shock when they received the necessary 75% approval from members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. It helped that the newcomers to the ballot didn’t draw too much attention. Of that group, only Cole Hamels even cleared the 5% threshold to avoid being dropped from future votes.
Next year, Posey has a chance to make the shrine in Cooperstown, New York, on his first try. A seven-time MLB All-Star who led the Giants to three World Series titles, the star catcher was the National League MVP in 2012, when he also led the NL in batting average.
Catcher can be a tough position to predict when it comes to voting for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but Joe Mauer made it two years ago on his first opportunity.
“I remember doing, like, a poll before that ballot came out, just gauging what people thought would happen with Mauer, and the results were all over the place,” said Ryan Thibodaux, who runs an online ballot tracker prior to the announcement of each year’s results. “Some people thought he’d get like 20%, and some people thought he’d get elected. I think the sense with Posey, maybe because of Mauer a little bit, is that he could very well get in on the first ballot.”
Andy Pettitte’s vote jumped from 27.9% to 48.5% this year, and Félix Hernández’s increased from 20.6% to 46.1%. That does not mean those two pitchers’ chances of being inducted are that similar. Pettitte only has two more years on the ballot before exhausting the 10-year limit. Hernández, on the other hand, has only been on it twice and has plenty of time.
Lately, voters have been quite open to considering the top starting pitchers on the ballot. CC Sabathia was a first-ballot inductee last year, and now Pettitte and Hernández have had big jumps in approval. Also, Hamels earned 23.8% support in his first time on the ballot.
A concern for Hamels is the fact that eventually the likes of Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer — each of whom has three Cy Young Awards — will be on the ballot. It will be harder for other starters if they’re being compared directly to those three, but Hernández might get in before that becomes an issue.
The highest vote recipient who didn’t reach 75% this year is Chase Utley, who moved from 39.8% to 59.1%. This was only the third time on the ballot for the former second baseman.
“It looks like Utley got himself into a position where he might be elected as soon as next year, although a 16% gain is not easy,” Thibodaux said. “He’ll probably get close if he doesn’t actually get all the way.”
Only one player will be in his 10th year on the ballot next time, marking his final chance to be elected by the BBWAA (the committee vote route will remain an option). That’s Omar Vizquel, who received only 18.4% approval this year.
The slick-fielding shortstop was at 52.6% in 2020, but he was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife, and his support cratered. He was also sued over claims of sexual harassment by a former minor league bat boy.