Who is on the 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and what’s the induction process?

The air is crisp, the leaves are faded and the gravy needs stirring on the stove. Three unmistakable signs that it’s not baseball season.

Only that it’s baseball ballot season.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame announced the candidates for the 2024 ballot Monday. Adrián Beltré headlines a list of 12 newcomers to the ballot alongside Joe Mauer, Chase Utley and David Wright. Fourteen holdovers return to the ballot, including Todd Helton, Billy Wagner and Andruw Jones.

How does a player make the ballot and when will the 2024 class be revealed? Here’s how a Hall of Famer is made.

Eligibility requirements

To be eligible, a player has to have played 10 seasons in the big leagues and been active in Major League Baseball at some point between five to 15 years before the Hall of Fame election. The player must also be five calendar years removed from their Major League Baseball playing career, but can still be connected to the sport and league through coaching or business opportunities.

To be on the 2024 ballot, a player’s final game had to be in 2018 or earlier.

If a player who has not been retired for the full five years dies, the candidate is eligible in the next regular election, if it is held at least six months after the date of death or after the end of the five-year period, whichever occurs first.

Any player on baseball’s ineligible list — people prohibited from playing or working in professional baseball — is not eligible.

How a nomination becomes an induction

A player must be named on 75 percent of the voter ballots to be selected for the Hall of Fame.

Active and honorary members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, who have been active baseball writers for at least 10 years, can vote for a maximum of 10 players. Electors vote for no more than 10 eligible candidates. Write-ins are not allowed.

If a player doesn’t garner the necessary number of votes to hang in the halls of Cooperstown, N.Y., there’s still hope. Players can stay on the ballot for up to 10 years as long as they receive more than 5 percent of the vote each year. If they fail to reach that threshold during any voting cycle, they’re removed from the ballot the following year and are not eligible to return.

Last year, 12 of the 28 players on the ballot didn’t reach the 5 percent threshold, including Huston Street, John Lackey and R.A. Dickey.

When will the results be announced?

The ballot is first released in November before the physical ballots are mailed to eligible writers/voters, who have 20 days to send them back. The 2024 inductees — if anyone clears 75 percent — will be named on Jan. 23.

When will the 2024 class be inducted?

The 2024 induction will take place on July 21 at 1:30 p.m. on the grounds of the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown.

2024 ballot headliners

Adrian Beltré

Beltré recorded 3,166 hits and 477 home runs and won five Gold Gloves and two Platinum Gloves over his 21-year career with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and Texas Rangers. If inducted, he’d become the fifth Dominican-born Hall of Famer.

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Todd Helton

Among those returning to the ballot, Helton was closest to induction last year, landing on 72.2 percent of ballots. The five-time All-Star was a career .316 hitter, ending his career with 2,519 hits and 369 home runs. This will be his sixth year on the ballot.

Billy Wagner

The longtime Houston Astros closer received 68.1 percent of the vote last year in his eighth time on the ballot. A seven-time All-Star, Wagner’s 422 saves rank sixth all time. Three of the five ahead of him (Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman and Lee Smith) are in the Hall.

Joe Mauer

The 2009 American League MVP, Mauer played his entire 15-year career for the Minnesota Twins, making six All-Star teams and winning three Gold Gloves. He also won three batting titles, including in 2009, when he hit .365 with 28 home runs during the MVP campaign.

Chase Utley

A six-time All-Star, Utley was a key member of the Philadelphia Phillies’ 2008 World Series team. The second baseman won four consecutive Silver Slugger awards from 2006 to 2009.

Full 2024 ballot

Holdovers (14)

Todd Helton
Billy Wagner
Andruw Jones
Gary Sheffield
Carlos Beltrán
Alex Rodriguez
Manny Ramirez
Omar Vizquel
Andy Pettitte
Bobby Abreu
Jimmy Rollins
Mark Buehrle
Francisco Rodríguez
Torii Hunter

Newcomers (12)

Adrián Beltré
Joe Mauer
Chase Utley
David Wright
Bartolo Colon
Matt Holliday
Adrián González
José Bautista
José Reyes
Victor Martinez
James Shields
Brandon Phillips

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What is the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot?

In addition to the BBWAA ballot, players can eventually reach the Hall via one of the Era Committees. The Era Committees — split into contemporary (1980-present) and classic (before 1980) — consider retired players no longer eligible for the BBWAA ballot, as well as managers, umpires and executives. The Era Committees have chosen 105 major leaguers, 33 executives, 22 managers, 10 umpires and nine Negro Leaguers (179 total) to the Hall of Fame.

Eight candidates are being considered by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee for managers/executives/umpires for induction in the Class of 2024.

Four managers (Cito Gaston, Davey Johnson, Jim Leyland and Lou Piniella), two umpires (Ed Montague and Joe West) and two executives (Bill White and Hank Peters) are candidates. All candidates except Peters are living.

A candidate who receives 75 percent of votes on the ballots cast by a 16-member committee will be inducted. The Contemporary Era Committee will meet at MLB’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn. on Dec. 3 to vote.

Here is the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot for the @BaseballHall Class of 2024.
Former managers, executives, and umpires whose primary contributions to the game came since 1980 were eligible for consideration.
Voting results will be announced December 3rd.
— MLB (@MLB) October 19, 2023

Ted Simmons, the longtime catcher inducted in 2020, provides an example of how the era committees can give candidates a second chance.

Simmons debuted on the BBWAA ballot as a player in 1994, but fell off after receiving only 3.7 percent of the vote. He was reconsidered by the Modern Baseball Era Committee in 2019, again falling shy by only one vote. Simmons prevailed in 2020, when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Modern Baseball Era committee 26 years after he lost his BBWAA Hall of Fame contention.

Other awards

If you’ve ever watched baseball at home, there’s a chance you got to see — and hear — more than just one person with Hall of Fame-recognized talent in a single game. The Baseball Hall of Fame hands out the Ford C. Frick Award annually, rewarding excellence in broadcasting.

The 2024 nominees include Joe Buck, Joe Castiglione, Gary Cohen, Jacques Doucet, Tom Hamilton, Ernie Johnson Sr., Ken Korach, Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper and Dan Shulman.

The winner will be announced at the Baseball Winter Meetings on Dec. 7 in Nashville and honored during the awards presentation, as part of the Baseball Hall of Fame weekend celebrations, on July 20 in Cooperstown.

If reading is more your thing, the Career Excellence Award honors a baseball writer or writers for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing,” the BBWAA website says.

The award is voted upon annually — and has been since 1962 — by the BBWAA. Each award recipient (who is not considered an inductee) gets a certificate during Hall of Fame Weekend and is recognized in the “Scribes and Mikemen” exhibit in the Library of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.