Wait 'till next year? Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2026 doesn't have a slam-dunk first-ballot option 

Now that the star-studded group of Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner have joined Dave Parker and the late Dick Allen in the baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2025, what does the immediate future hold for upcoming potential Cooperstown classes?

Or, to put it another way . . . what happened to all the all-timers?

Carlos Beltran, who fell 19 votes shorts this year in his third year on the ballot, could be the only former player voted into the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America next year.

Andruw Jones, with two years left on the ballot, received 66.2%.

The list of first-time eligible players on the 2026 Hall of Fame ballot does not include any can’t miss, sure-fire, first-ballot names.

The top name on the potential 2026 ballot is lefthander Cole Hamels, who won 163 games in a 15-year career.

Other notable first-timers include Ryan Braun, Shin-Soo Choo, Edwin Encarnación, Alex Gordon, Matt Kemp, Nick Markakis, Daniel Murphy and Hunter Pence.

Do any of those good, solid players sound like first-ballot Hall of Famers to you?

The road to Cooperstown after 2026 includes some big names who should get in, either on the first ballot or in later years in some cases.

In 2027, former San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey is the head of the class.

In 2028, the St. Louis Cardinals duo of first baseman Albert Pujols and catcher Yadier Molina could go in together.

The 2029 class is stacked, with former Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera, former Reds first baseman Joey Votto and former pitchers Adam Wainwright and Zack Greinke.

Each year, those top names will join interesting first-timers who might get tepid support initially but then build a compelling case over the years, as Wagner did. The former Mets closer picked up 10.5% in his first year on the ballot, and 10.2% in his second.

Under current rules, players stay on the ballot if they get at least 5% of the vote, and they can be considered by BBWAA voters for a maximum of 10 years.

Wagner didn’t get more than 50% until his seventh year. Last year, he got 73.8%, with 75% needed for election to Cooperstown. He missed by five votes.

So what happened over the last 10 years? Did Wagner somehow sneak into ballparks after his retirement and add to his save total?

He did not.

What happened is a few things: the voting body changed as some writers left the industry and newer ones became Hall of Fame voters. Relievers, a group that some feel are underrepresented in the Hall, started to get more respect. Wagner’s supporters waged a campaign to point out the statistics that they feel made him worthy of a plaque along with the rest of the immortals in the Hall.

That’s one of the great things about the Hall of Fame: Whether you are voted in by the writers in your first year on the ballot or your last, or whether you make it via a 16-person Eras Committee (as Parker and Allen did last month), you are forever a Hall of Famer, right up there with Babe Ruth and Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson and all the rest.

Baseball’s steroid era created a sad situation in which two of the game’s greatest players in Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens did not get into the Hall because of their use of performance-enhancing drugs.

That duo is no longer on the ballot as their 10 years have passed. Future ballots will likely not allow PED-scarred Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez, or even Andy Pettitte, into the Hall. Ramirez’s last year on the ballot is 2026; he got 34.3% of the vote this time.

Pettitte’s time on the ballot is up in 2028. The former Yankees lefthander received 27.9%.

A-Rod? He was named on 37.1% of the ballots in his fourth year of eligibility. One of the greatest and most polarizing players of all-time, Rodriguez is unlikely to ever get into the Hall of Fame unless he buys a ticket. But he still has six cracks at it on the BBWAA ballot.

Should the steroid era players eventually get into the Hall? In a 2022 ESPN appearance, Bonds said: “It means a lot to all of us, 100 percent. We’ve earned it.”

That’s debatable. And passionate debate is what the baseball Hall of Fame is about, and will always be about.

So have at it. For next year and for years to come.

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.