Torii Hunter is back on the Hall of Fame ballot, but has a lot on the line

Last year Minnesota Twins fans watched one of the most iconic players in franchise history get inducted into Cooperstown, as Joe Mauer became a first ballot Hall of Famer. While that understandably dominated everyone's attention, one of Mauer's teammates was also on the ballot and is hoping to make some progress this year.

Torii Hunter is one of the flag bearers of those 2000s Twins teams, as he's etched into the memories fans have of that era. It's impossible to think of that time and not picture Hunter scaling the outfield wall to rob a home run, or his beaming smile as he strode around the field.

Mauer was as close to a no-brainer Hall of Famer as it gets with the latest generation of Twins players, but the case is a little harder to make for Hunter. That's something he's hoping BBWAA voters consider carefully, as time is starting to run out on Torii joining his former teammate in Cooperstown.

Torii Hunter is in danger of falling off the Hall of Fame ballot in 2025

Getting into the Hall of Fame is tricky business, as not only do players need to meet subjective criteria from voter-to-voter, but they need to satisfy certain numerical thresholds.

Leave it to baseball to forever incorporate math into everything it does.

There's only one way for players to get into the Hall of Fame but two ways they can fall off the ballot. Anyone who gets at least 75 percent of the vote in a given year is elected to Cooperstown, but the flip side of that is any player getting less than 5 percent is dropped from the ballot the following year. Adjacently, if a player is on the ballot for ten years and doesn't get in, he won't get an eleventh try to get in.

Hunter is in his fifth year of eligibility, and while he's come close to falling off the ballot once his chances remain alive for the time being.

Will Torii Hunter make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Hall of Fame voters love unique stats, which is why Hunter being one of five players in MLB history to finish his career with at least 350 home runs, 150 stolen bases, 450 doubles and 2,400 hits bodes well for him -- or at least in theory. Voters also love context, and juxtoposed against those number working in Hunter's favor is the fact that Gary Sheffield is one of the other four players and he fell off the ballot last year.

The potential upside there is that Sheffield didn't fall off due to coming in under the minumum percentage, rather his ten years on the ballot were exhausted. Again, that's not exactly a vote of confidence for Hunter's chances but it does show that he might get the full amount of time to make his case and get to that 75 percent benchmark.

Let's keep using Sheffield as a mile marker for Hunter; he secured more votes in each successive year after his fifth appearance on the ballot, capping out at 64 percent last year. That's not enough to get in but it's a similar trajectory to what Hunter is on having started to garner more votes each year since nearly falling off back in 2022.

That year Hunter scarped by with 5.3 percent of the vote, but bounced back to get 6.9 percent in 2023 and 7.3 percent last season. It's not a huge spike but the needle seems to be pointing in the right direction.

What we should be looking for this year is how much of a jump Hunter takes. If he continues to trend up and secure more votes then it's clear that his case is building. If he stagnates or drops back, then his case looks significantly weaker and things begin to get bleak.

One potential ace up Hunter's sleeve in terms of getting more votes this year is Ichiro being on the ballot. It's not that he'll be directly compared to him -- Ichiro seems like a no-brainer first ballot Hall of Famer -- rather the era they played in will have a brighter spotlight on it. Hunter isn't on Ichiro's level in terms of comparative Hall of Fame credentials, but the fact that we will be looking back fondly on an era where Hunter was at his peak might help glossy up his chances.

BBWAA voters have until New Year's Eve to submit their votes for this year's class, and we'll all start tracking ballots on January 21st when the final tally is revealed.

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