With one day to go, we now know exactly 50% of the ballots.
Beltre 99.0%
Mauer 82.9%
Helton 82.4%
Wagner 78.2%
Sheffield 74.6%
Jones 70.5%
According to the people who monitor the stuff year in and year out, most players at the top will have some degree of drop off once the announcement is made. Amongst the batch of unrevealed ballots are typically the writers who believe in the small hall philosophy as well as the blank ballots. No revealed ballots so far have been blank, and I think only a couple ballots have had only two players.
So right now the only player certain to get in is Beltre, with Mauer’s chances being very very good but not a lock. They aren’t too bullish on Helton making it because there still are some writers out there who haven’t revealed their ballots yet and did not vote for Helton last year, so he’s basically a coin flip. Wagner, Sheffield and Jones will probably fall short again.