voted in last month by the contemporary era committee<\/a>. Jones was born on April 23, 1977, and Beltr\u00e1n one day later.<\/p>\n\u201cCompeting against each other for so many years it\u2019s just a great honor to be in the same elite group with him,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
Jones received just 7.3% in his first appearance in 2018 and didn\u2019t get half the total until receiving 58.1% in 2023. He increased to 61.6% and 66.2%, falling 35 votes short last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first year I heard a lot of my friends were telling me, you barely made it, you\u2019re barely hanging there,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years in the organization were eligible to vote.<\/p>\n
Chase Utley (59.1%) was the only other candidate to get at least half the vote, improving from 39.8% last year. He was followed by Andy Pettitte at 48.5%, an increase from 27.9% last year, and F\u00e9lix Hern\u00e1ndez at 46.1%, up from 20.6%.<\/p>\n
Cole Hamels topped first-time candidates at 23.8%. The other first-time players were all under 5% and will be dropped from future votes.<\/p>\n
Steroids-tainted players again were kept from the hall. Alex Rodriguez received 40% in his fifth appearance, up from 37.1%, and Manny Ramirez 38.8% in his 10th and final appearance.<\/p>\n
David Wright increased to 14.8% from 8.1%.<\/p>\n
There were 11 blank ballots.<\/p>\n
A nine-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Beltr\u00e1n batted .279 with 435 homers and 1,587 RBIs over 20 seasons with Kansas City (1999-2004), Houston (2004, \u201917), the Mets (2005-11), San Francisco (2011), St. Louis (2012-13), the New York Yankees (20014-16) and Texas (2016). He had 124 homers hitting right-handed and 311 batting left \u2014 crediting coach Kevin Long for his left-handed success.<\/p>\n
Beltr\u00e1n was the 1999 AL Rookie of the Year and won three Gold Gloves, also hitting .307 in the postseason with 16 homers and 42 RBIs in 65 games.<\/p>\n
While the hall makes the decision on the cap for his plaque, Beltr\u00e1n said: \u201cThere’s no doubt that the Mets are a big part of my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
He still has managerial aspirations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order for you to have opportunities in baseball, you have to stay relevant, you have stay in the game,\u201d Beltr\u00e1n said. \u201cManaging is something that I would love to try it at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones batted .254 with 434 homers, 1,289 RBIs and 152 stolen bases in 17 seasons with Atlanta (1996-2007), the Los Angeles Dodgers (2008), Texas (2009), the Chicago White Sox (2010) and the Yankees (2011-12). He finished his career with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Japan\u2019s Pacific League from 2013-14.<\/p>\n
His batting average is the second-lowest for a position player voted to the Hall of Fame, just above the .253 of Ray Schalk, a superior defensive catcher, and just below the .256 of Harmon Killebrew, who hit 573 homers.<\/p>\n
A five-time All-Star, Jones earned 10 Gold Gloves. He joins Braves teammates Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper Jones and Fred McGriff in the hall along with manager Bobby Cox.<\/p>\n
In the 1996 World Series opener at Yankee Stadium, Jones at 19 years, 5 months became the youngest player to homer in a Series game, beating Mickey Mantle\u2019s old mark by 18 months. Going deep against Pettitte in the second inning and Brian Boehringer in the third of a 12-1 rout, Jones became the second player to homer in his first two Series at-bats after Gene Tenace in 1972.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t play this game to be Hall of Famer,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI played this game too to help my team win.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\nCopyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Carlos Beltr\u00e1n fielded a question about the impact of his role in the Houston Astros’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,70330,139,54,3211,4,256,8080,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-530595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-beltran-jones-hall-of-fame","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-astros","13":"tag-houstonastros","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-mlb-baseball","16":"tag-mlb-world-series","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115932176298039934","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}