While Mark Buehrle's share of Hall of Fame votes fell back into the single digits from 2023 to 2024, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Sure, he'd probably never actually reach the source of that light, but at least everybody would still be able to see him in there.
Buehrle's vote total dropped from 10.9 percent to 8.3 percent last January, but surviving and advancing from a crowded ballot was the name of the game. With Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer, Todd Helton and Gary Sheffield out of the running, and Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia the only equally compelling candidates coming aboard, Buehrle stood to benefit from the open spots, at least from Big Hall voters.
Sure enough, through 105 votes on Ryan Thibodaux's Hall of Fame tracker, Buehrle is running at a personal-best 14.4 percent. That won't get him meaningfully closer to Cooperstown, but at least he won't have to sweat the 5 percent cutoff when the Hall of Fame announces the Class of 2025 on Jan. 21, and he'll probably clear that threshold with ease in 2026 as well.
Starting pitchers as a whole are benefiting from the extra opportunities for consideration. CC Sabathia looks like he'll enter the Hall of Fame on the first ballot with room to spare at 89.4 percent, but even the more doubtful cases are faring well. Andy Pettitte's support has jumped from 13.5 percent last year to a 31.7 percent clip this year, and Felix Hernández is debuting at 26 percent thus far.
Pettitte has the superior case to Buehrle if you can set aside the HGH admission, simply because he threw another enormous season's worth of October innings, and since some voters are drawing the line at a failed test in order to avoid determining (un)clean players by hunches hearsay, there's at least some logical consistency. Hernández's percentage, on the other hand, caught me by surprise, and it remained surprising when I stacked their careers:
| Pitcher | IP | W-L | ERA+ | bWAR | 7-yr | JAWS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buerhle | 3283.1 | 214-160 | 117 | 60.0 | 35.8 | 47.4 |
| Hernández | 2729.2 | 169-136 | 117 | 49.9 | 38.5 | 44.1 |
Hernández undoubtedly has the better peak, especially when viewed through awards voting. Hernández won the Cy Young Award in 2010 and garnered support in five other seasons, including two second-place finishes, while Buehrle boasts only one fifth-place showing. It just doesn't strike me as that strong of a peak if it didn't result in a better ERA score over far fewer innings, a la Johan Santana.
My guess is that Hernández is benefiting from Santana's unjust one-and-done experience in 2018, and it's an educated guess since Jay Jaffe said exactly that with his own ballot:
I’m not saying I believe all three belong in the Hall, and I’m not yet convinced Hernández does, but I do know that I don’t want him to fall off the ballot and be cast into a decades-long limbo alongside two-time Cy Young winner Johan Santana, who received just 2.4% on a very crowded 2018 ballot. I’m voting for Hernández to help ensure he reaches 5% and maintains eligibility, which would give voters — myself included — at least another year to let his candidacy marinate.
And that's fine. You and I might have Buehrle, Pettitte and Hernández in different orders, but it ultimately feels like they're merely at different parts of a rising tide that is lifting all boats. It's not like there's a scenario where Buehrle experiences a meaningful surge while leaving all his peers in his wake, so the gains of similar pitchers could eventually be realized across the board. Another Hernández-like case in Cole Hamels will be joining the 2026 ballot, and another Buehrle-like case in Jon Lester is coming the year after that, so we're going to get to have this same conversation over and over again.
