The Baseball Hall of Fame has officially named its class of 2026, with Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones joining Jeff Kent in Cooperstown after the BBWAA revealed the results of its annual voting on Tuesday night. All three are worthy candidates (sign-stealing scandals aside, of course), and all three deserve their moment in the sun this summer.
There's plenty of time to look back, however. Right now we want to look forward: While we've got the Hall of Fame on the brain, we thought we'd take a look at which active players have the best chance of one day joining the sport's most exclusive fraternity. Some might as well start on their plaques right now; others, however, have some work to be done. No matter what, we've ranked them all, from locks to the Hall of Very Good to young players on the right path.
The locks
Let's start with the easy ones. We're defining "locks" here as either 1) players who would be safely in the Hall of Fame if they retired tomorrow or 2) players who have built the lion's share of their Cooperstown case already and will put the finishing touches on it soon, barring something truly unforeseen like a sudden injury.
3B Nolan Arenado
OF/SS Mookie Betts
1B Freddie Freeman
OF/1B Bryce Harper
OF Aaron Judge
SS Francisco Lindor
3B Manny Machado
DH/RHP Shohei Ohtani
3B Jose Ramirez
RHP Max Scherzer
OF Mike Trout
RHP Justin Verlander
Hopefully there need be very little discussion about Verlander, Scherzer and Trout, open and shut cases if ever there were any. Betts and Freeman have already cleared the statistical bar for inclusion as well. Technically Judge and Ohtani haven't yet, but come on: The former is one more prime season away from clearing the Hall of Fame average for bWAR among right fielders, and while the latter technically has some work left to do, four MVPs in five years while revolutionizing what we thought possible in the modern game is enough to clear what little gap remains.
And then comes the second tier, and we can already hear a little grumbling from the peanut gallery. But while Arenado, Harper, Lindor, Machado and Ramirez are all a step down from inner-circle territory — and the latter four might fall just short if for some reason they never played another game — they'll all be comfortably within the statistical bounds of the Hall if they continue on anything like a normal aging curve. Arenado might be done accruing value, but eight All-Star nods, 10 Gold Gloves, a reputation as among the greatest defensive third basemen ever and a Hall of Fame peak (his best seven-year bWAR eclipses the Hall average at the position) gets him in.
A year or two away
Unlike the category above, none of these names can safely be considered in at the moment. All of them have more work to do — one great year in some cases, more in others — in order to reach the threshold necessary, and all of them have at least some reason to doubt that they can get that work done in time.
Aroldis Chapman
Gerrit Cole
Jacob deGrom
Chris Sale
Blake Snell
Giancarlo Stanton
Zack Wheeler
If you want to argue that Chapman is already in, I won't argue the point too much; he already compares pretty well to 2025 inductee Billy Wagner, and voters have changed how they evaluate relievers compared to previous generations. Stanton, too, might be closer than you think: He's up to 453 homers now, and that's not even including the 18 he's hit while authoring one of the more impressive postseason resumes around. If he squeezes out just a couple more 25-homer campaigns, he'll join the (clean) 500 club and his case will be pretty iron-clad.
And then we have the starting pitchers, maybe the single most difficult position to evaluate for the Hall based on how their usage has changed in recent years. If you just compare the WAR totals, no modern starters will ever measure up, but that's hardly a fair barometer. The only questions are where the line will eventually get drawn, and who will be on the right side of it? Sale and Cole are probably the leaders of this pack right now. deGrom and Snell will need to make a peak argument, one that would become much easier if either of them could capture a third Cy Young — typically a surefire sign of a future Hall of Famer. Wheeler, meanwhile, is somewhere in the middle, an incredible pitcher who may have hit his stride too late in his career to stack up enough elite seasons. He's in a race against time, especially considering his current injury situation.
The Hall of Very Good
This one's self-explanatory: Every generation has its players who were stars in their day but just a cut below real consideration for the Hall. Here's the current crop.
Alex Bregman
JT Realmuto
Corey Seager
Will Smith
Trea Turner
Kyle Tucker
Maybe this seems harsh, but the numbers back it up. It's of course possible that Bregman, Seager and Turner could stack a few more vintage seasons; as it stands right now, though, they all have a lot of ground to make up and they're all on the wrong side of 30 while showing signs of decline. Realmuto's decline has already been underway for years, and while catchers get graded on a curve, I don't think he's done quite enough to put himself in the Joe Mauer/Buster Posey category.
If anyone can make this look silly in a few years' time, it's Tucker, who's been a top-10 hitter on a rate basis over the last five years. But he simply hasn't played enough to rack up huge totals, and he just turned 29. If he defies Father Time in his 30s, he absolutely has a shot, but I'm skeptical.
Wheels up
And now we've arrived at the current generation, the best of the best among those currently smack in (or, in a couple cases, still just entering) their primes. It's still too early to say with any confidence who from the list below will wind up in Cooperstown, and there's much more work to be done. But rest assured that at least a handful will, and all of them have a good shot if they continue their current trajectories.
Ronald Acuña Jr.
Corbin Carroll
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Gunnar Henderson
Julio Rodriguez
Paul Skenes
Tarik Skubal
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Bobby Witt Jr.
If you want to hold Tatis Jr.'s PED suspension against him, the same way it hung over Bonds and Clemens and other greats, that's fair. But I do think the environment has shifted a bit, and he's too good an all-around player to discard him entirely at age 27. Skenes and Skubal seem like the surest bets, but you should know better by now than to assume anything when it comes to pitchers. Beyond that, these are all young stars capable of cranking out 5-7 WAR seasons on a regular basis, with only Acuña Jr.'s injury history sticking out as a red flag.
Is it already too late?
All four of the names below have the requisite talent to make a push toward the Hall. All are still smack in the middle of their primes. And yet, all four seem more likely to fall short, for no other reason than they've gotten off to a late start.
Yordan Alvarez
Garrett Crochet
Cal Raleigh
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Crochet and Yamamoto could easily make a case to be in the Wheels Up group. We're sticking them here, though. Both aces are about to enter their age-27 seasons with exactly one great campaign to their names, and both have concerning injuries in their recent pasts. Both may well make it to Cooperstown, but it's going to take a sustained run of excellence to make up for lost time and clear the workload threshold required.
Raleigh is coming off one of the greatest seasons we've ever seen from a catcher, and he was very good in 2022-2024. He just turned 29, though, and this is a notoriously brutal position to sustain as you enter your 30s. If Raleigh keeps churning out seasons even half as good as his 2025, he'll be in the conversation, but Father Time has a way of winning these battles.
The next wave
Every Hall of Fame career starts somewhere. It's early days yet for all of these guys, but they're all off to strong starts, and all of them have shown the sort of raw talent that can eventually find its way to Cooperstown. It's far too soon to make any predictions, though. Just sit back, enjoy the show and we'll revisit this again in a few years.
Junior Caminero
Jackson Chourio
Elly De La Cruz
Nick Kurtz
Jackson Merrill
James Wood
Kurtz just had one of the best rookie seasons ever, and Caminero just hit 45 homers. Both are still 22 years old. That's the kind of talent we're dealing with, and one luck at De La Cruz and Wood shows the kind of ceiling they have if it all clicks. Of course, Merrill shows the perils of betting on a young player too early: He looked ticketed for superstardom after his sensational 2024 season, only to battle injuries and ineffectiveness last year. This is much more art than science.