NEW YORK — Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones, center fielders who excelled at the plate and with their gloves, were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday.
Beltrán, making his fourth appearance on the ballot, received 358 of 425 votes for 84.2% from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, 39 above the 319 needed for the 75% threshold.
Jones, in the ninth of 10 possible appearances, was picked on 333 ballots for 78.4%. He is the first native of Curaçao to be elected to the Hall of Fame.
Mostly known for his tenure with the Atlanta Braves, Jones played one of his 17 major-league seasons with the Chicago White Sox, slashing .230/.341/.486 and hitting 19 home runs with a 1.9 bWAR in 2010.
Beltrán moved up steadily from 46.5% in 2023 to 57.1% the following year and 70.3% in 2025, when he fell 19 votes short as Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner were elected.
Beltrán was hired as the New York Mets manager on Nov. 1, 2019, then fired Jan. 16 without having managed a game, three days after he was the only Houston Astros player mentioned by name in a report by Major League Baseball regarding the team’s illicit use of electronics to steal signs during its run to the 2017 World Series championship.
Jones received just 7.3% in his first appearance in 2018 and didn’t get half the total until receiving 58.1% in 2023. He increased to 61.6% and 66.2%, falling 35 votes short last year.
They will be inducted July 26 in Cooperstown, N.Y., along with second baseman Jeff Kent, voted in last month by the contemporary era committee.
BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years in the organization were eligible to vote.
Chase Utley (59.1%) was the only other candidate to get at least half the vote, improving from 39.8% last year. He was followed by Andy Pettitte at 48.5%, an increase from 27.9% last year, and Félix Hernández at 46.1%, up from 20.6%.
Cole Hamels topped first-time candidates at 23.8%. The other first-time players were all under 5% and will be dropped from future votes.
Steroids-tainted players again were kept from the hall. Alex Rodriguez received 40% in his fifth appearance, up from 7.1%, and Manny Ramirez 38.8% in his 10th and final appearance.
David Wright increased to 14.8% from 8.1%.
There were 11 blank ballots.
A nine-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Beltrán batted .279 with 435 home runs and 1,587 RBIs over 20 seasons with the Kansas City Royals (1999-2004), Astros (2004, ’17), Mets (2005-11), San Francisco Giants (2011), St. Louis Cardinals (2012-13), New York Yankees (20014-16) and Texas Rangers (2016). He had 311 home runs hitting left-handed and 124 batting right-handed.
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Beltrán was the 1999 AL Rookie of the Year and won three Gold Gloves, also hitting .307 in the postseason with 16 home runs and 42 RBIs in 65 games.
Jones batted .254 with 434 home runs, 1,289 RBIs and 152 stolen bases in 17 seasons with the Braves (1996-2007), Los Angeles Dodgers (2008), Rangers (2009), White Sox (2010) and Yankees (2011-12). He finished his career with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Japan’s Pacific League from 2013-14.
His batting average is the second-lowest for a position player voted to the Hall of Fame, just above the .253 of Ray Schalk, a superior defensive catcher, and just below the .256 of Harmon Killebrew, who hit 573 home runs.
A five-time All-Star, Jones earned 10 Gold Gloves. He joins Braves teammates Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper Jones and Fred McGriff in the hall, along with manager Bobby Cox.
In the 1996 World Series opener at Yankee Stadium, Jones at 19 years, 5 months became the youngest player to homer in a Series game, beating Mickey Mantle’s old mark by 18 months. Going deep against Pettitte in the second inning and Brian Boehringer in the third of a 12-1 rout, Jones became the second player to homer in his first two Series at-bats after Gene Tenace in 1972.