For too long, Atlanta Braves great Andruw Jones has been kept out of the Hall of Fame despite the vast majority agreeing that he is one of the best centerfielders to every play the game of baseball. While Jones gained more support last year among voters, it was not enough of a gain to get him in and even Chipper Jones weighed in on the snub. It is great that Jones' is gaining even more support this year as he approaches his final chances on the main ballot, there is still a significant hurdle to his chances.
According to the fantastic Hall of Fame voting tracker put together by Ryan Thibodaux and his crew, Jones has appeared on 83% of known ballots thus far as of the morning of January 7. Given that a player needs 75% to make it into the Hall, it certainly looks like Jones is on track for induction into Cooperstown.
However, that is only on known ballots and, as previously years as shown, a stubborn minority of Hall of Fame voters that insist on keeping their votes private are still very likely to determine whether or not Jones finally gets in.
Braves' Andruw Jones' Hall of Fame fate is still unfortunately in the hands of private voters
One need only look back to the voting results from 2025 to see what Andruw is up against here. In last year's vote, Jones would have barely been on the outside looking in if percentages from public ballots were all that counted as he cleared 70%. However, Jones only appeared on 44.3% of private ballots. While those private ballots only accounted for 61 votes in 2025, the lack of support in that demographic dragged Andruw's total actual percentage of votes to 66.2%. That...is not ideal.
There is good news here, however, Those who keep their votes private are "usually" older voters who aren't actively writing about baseball anymore and they get culled over time while newer voters that get added tend to make their votes public and usually like Jones' Hall of Fame case. Just this year, Braves beat writer Mark Bowman got to cast his first Hall of Fame vote. To the surprise of exactly no one, one of his votes went to Andruw.
We can fully expect Jones to get a higher percentage than last year. If trends from the last couple of years hold, Jones will get around a 5% bump and exceed 70% in the final total. However, to get to the needed 75%, he is really going to either need some private voters to change their minds and/or for less of them to exist at all.