Through the 2024 MLB All-Star Game on Tuesday, over 23,000 men have played at least one game in Major League history. But come Sunday, just 274 of those, or 1.2 percent, will have the honor of calling themselves Baseball Hall of Famers. The 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony takes place on Sunday from Cooperstown, New York, and this year’s class will enshrine a total of four people, including three players.
Due to that such low rate of MLB players getting the call for Cooperstown, the Baseball Hall of Fame is widely regarded as the most prestigious in all of sports. The inaugural class was inducted in 1936, making the 2024 class the 88th anniversary, and the three-player group of Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer, and Todd Helton includes ballplayers who excelled both at the plate and in the field. All three won at least four Silver Slugger awards, while each of them also won at least three Gold Glove awards. Here’s a bit more of why the Baseball Writers’ Association of America voted these three among the 26 on the 2024 Hall of Fame ballot for enshrinement.
Adrian Beltre
A veteran of 21 MLB seasons, the third baseman was elected in his first year on the ballot with 95.1 percent of the vote. When he made his debut in 1998, the 19-year-old Beltre was the youngest player in the sport. Over the course of his career, he displayed a combination of hitting and defense never seen before at the position as he’s one of just four players—and the only infielder—to have at least 3,000 hits, 400 home runs, and win five Gold Gloves.While many players tend to fade as they reach their 30s, that wasn’t the case with Beltre as the symmetry of his career numbers is astonishing. He hit 234 home runs in his 20s and 235 home runs in his 30s, while still maintaining elite work with his glove. All four of his Gold Glove awards came in his 30s, and he spent that latter part of his career with the Texas Rangers, who are among four teams he played for but is the club who he selected to represent on his Hall of Fame cap. Beltre will become just the second Hall of Famer whose primary team was the Rangers, and he’s only the fifth Dominican-born player to make Cooperstown.
Joe Mauer
With 76.1 percent of the vote, Mauer just met the 75 percent threshold to get inducted in on his first year on the ballot, making him the third catcher ever with that honor (Johnny Bench, Ivan Rodriguez). The native of St. Paul, Minnesota, spent his entire career with his hometown team of the Minnesota Twins after being the No. 1 overall pick in the 2001 MLB Draft. Mauer was a hitting machine who is a lifetime .306 hitter and is the only catcher in MLB history with three batting titles. He won the 2009 American League MVP after hitting .365 that season, which is the best batting average by a catcher in MLB history.That season was also the second of three straight years in which Mauer won a Gold Glove behind the plate. Symptoms from concussions forced him to move to first base later in his career, but he spent the majority of his career at backstop. His five seasons with at least five wins above replacement are the fourth-most among catchers in history. Mauer becomes just the fourth No. 1 overall pick to go into the Hall of Fame, joining Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, and Harold Baines.
Todd Helton
The lone player inductee to not go in on the first ballot, it took Helton six years to meet the threshold, and he received 79.7 percent of the vote. He had the stigma of playing in hitter-friendly Coors Field for his entire career to overcome, but lots of players spent much of their careers with the Rockies and failed to match Helton’s numbers. He was a lifetime .316 hitter and is one of nine players in MLB history with at least 2,500 hits and a .950-plus OPS. In 2000, Helton hit .372, which remains the seventh-closest season to .400 since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941.From 2000–04, there were few better in the sport as he led all of baseball in batting average, hits, doubles and extra-base hits. You could argue that five-year stretch is what got him the call from Cooperstown as all five of his All-Star selections, all four of his Silver Slugger awards, and all three of his Gold Gloves came during this span. Helton joins a Hall of Fame three years after his former backup on the Tennessee Volunteers football team got inducted, as Helton, briefly, started ahead of Peyton Manning (2021 Pro Football HOF) as a college quarterback.
Jim Leyland
The only non-player to get the call from the hall is former manager Jim Leyland, who was elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. A skipper of 22 seasons, and with four different clubs, Leyland led his teams to three pennants, including winning the 1997 World Series with the Florida Marlins. He sported a 1,769–1,728-2 record (.506 W-L percent), was a three-time Manager of the Year and is just one of eight men to win the award in both leagues.At the time of his final game in 2013, Leyland had the fourth-most postseason wins (44) in history by a manager. Three years after his last game in a Big Leagues dugout, Leyland was chosen to lead Team USA at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, and he led them to a gold medal. That makes him the only manager to win both a World Series and a WBC gold medal.
