There are always questions surrounding the National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot every year, but maybe none are bigger than whether or not Derek Jeter will be a unanimous inductee when all the ballots are handed in.
So far, that's the way things are trending.
Thanks to Hall of Fame ballot tracker Ryan Thibodaux, we know that all 138 public ballots -- and four anonymous ballots that have been revealed -- have Jeter's name checked off on them.
As Thibodaux points out, though, that's roughly 34.5 percent of the vote thus far. So while it's moving in the direction for Jeter to join former teammate Mariano Rivera as the second unanimous inductee, there are still many more ballots to be turned in before it's set in stone on Jan. 21 when the Class of 2020 is announced.
And history isn't really on Jeter's side. Great players like Hank Aaron (97.8 percent of the vote), Tom Seaver (98.8 percent), and Willie Mays (94.7 percent) didn't get voted in unanimously. Even Ken Griffey Jr., the one player many believed voters could never leave off their ballot, saw 99.3 percent of the vote. One voter didn't check his box.
But now that Rivera is in unanimously, the barrier is broken down and Jeter could benefit from that. However, SNY contributor Anthony McCarron heard from voters back in November who said they still didn't think Jeter wouldn't get 100 percent of the vote.
"I believe he should be unanimous, but I don't believe he will be," said one of the voters, who spoke on condition of anonymity at the time. "There's already too much of this notion out there that he was 'overrated,' whereas Mariano universally is considered the best to ever play his position.
"I believe Jeter will be very close, but will be left off a few ballots."
Then, there's this argument:
"Does anyone really want to be identified as the person who did not cast a vote for Derek Jeter?" another voter asked. "Leaving him off to accommodate others on a maxed ballot is, in my judgment, poor reasoning, but the only scenario I could imagine for not casting a Jeter vote."
The credentials are certainly there with 3,465 hits, 14 All-Star games, five World Series titles, 2000 World Series MVP, 1996 Rookie of the Year, and the list goes on.
We'll just have to wait to see if it's a unanimous selection.
