Canadian MLB star Larry Walker has just hours before he finds out whether he will be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his last year of eligibility.
Walker needs votes on 75 percent of ballots from the Baseball Writers' Association of America to be elected. The so-called 'ballot squeeze' has affected his candidacy in particular over the last decade; writers can only vote for a maximum of 10 players each year, forcing writers to make hard decisions when there are more than 10 "Hall of Fame-worthy" candidates on a ballot. In addition, a 2014 rule change to the Hall's eligibility process and voting rules determined that players could only be on the ballot for 10 years rather than the previously-allotted 15. This, too, affected Walker, who was in his fourth season of eligibility at the time — he then only had six more opportunities to get into the Hall.
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Now with a seat in Cooperstown potentially and finally on the horizon, Walker — who only started playing organized baseball at age 16 — thanked those who have shown support for him while also saying he personally believes he will "come up a little short" when balloting results are revealed.
Although I believe I’m going to come up a little short today I still wanna thank all you that have been pulling for me and showing your support. I’m grateful for all of you! It’s been fun leading up to today reading everyone’s thoughts. Cheers 🍻 LW
— Larry Walker (@Cdnmooselips33) January 21, 2020
While Walker appears to think he will not meet the 75 percent ballot threshold for election, publicly available ballots so far appear to show otherwise. Ryan Thibodeaux collects and aggregates all ballots made public by voting members of the BBWAA into a spreadsheet anyone can access. Walker has votes secured on 83.5 percent of the 210 ballots made public so far — according to Thibodeaux's estimations, that's just over half of all expected voters. This means he needs to appear on at least 65.5 percent of all remaining ballots to ensure his entrance to Cooperstown.
The BBWAA will announce the results of its 2020 Hall of Fame ballot on Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET.