Phillies HOF check: Schilling trending up, Abreu gets no love

Where do the former Phillies stand on the Hall of Fame ballot tracker?

Five former Phillies are on the ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2020, and so far only one player is projected to finally receive his ticket to Cooperstown.

With 16.5 percent (68 of 412 votes) now logged into Ryan Thibodaux’s (@NotMrTibbs) extraordinary Hall of Fame ballot tracker, five legends have at least 75 percent of the available votes: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter (still unanimous), Curt Schilling, and Larry Walker.

At this point, no other players have received 50 percent of the public vote.

Schilling, who spent the majority of his career pitching for the Phillies, is on his eighth ballot and has over 85 percent of the vote thus far. He still needs 251 votes to hit the 75 percent threshold for enshrinement, which has been withheld from him for years, likely due to his arguably questionable posts on his Twitter account, which at one point was deleted but has since been relaunched.

The four remaining Phillies on the ballot are seeing mixed results at this point, though it’s still early in the process.

Scott Rolen stands at 41.2 percent with growing support from voters in his third year on the ballot. He’s received 16 net public votes thus far, the most of any returning candidate. TBOH ranked Rolen, a budding star in the early 2000’s, one of the top-50 players in Phillies history.

Billy Wagner, whose case for Cooperstown has been laid out here, is at 27.9 percent. His 422 career saves are sixth all-time, ahead of multiple Hall of Fame relievers.

A surprising disappointment in the Hall of Fame voting is Bobby Abreu, who needs 16 more votes just to stay on the ballot beyond his first year. He stands at just 7.4 percent so far.

Philadelphia Phillies

We’ve laid out a very compelling case for the most recent Phillies Wall of Fame inductee to receive Hall of Fame consideration. Abreu is one of just seven players in baseball history with 550 doubles and 400 stolen bases, alone with Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, Craig Biggio, Honus Wagner, Paul Molitor, and Barry Bonds. If you factor in his 288 home runs, Abreu, Biggio, Molitor, and Bonds are the only players in baseball history with 200 home runs, 400 stolen bases, and 550 doubles.

Receiving no support in his first, and likely last, year on the ballot is Cliff Lee, who needs 21 votes to appear on next years ballot. Injuries derailed a career that was headed towards lengthy Cooperstown consideration, but only 143 wins and a 3.52 ERA won’t push Lee into the Hall of Fame.

The results will be announced on January 21 in what could be another large class going into Cooperstown. It could potentially see Jeter follow up his teammate Mariano Rivera as just the second unanimous selection, as well as a close race for Bonds and Clemens.