Boston Red Sox legend David Ortiz is expected to be a first-ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame later this year.

The Baseball Hall of Fame tracker website, which is run by Ryan Thibodaux, is now reporting Ortiz has received 84% of the 165 publicly known ballots cast so far, as previously reported by CBS Boston.

The publicly known brackets do, however, only account for 44.6% of the estimated 392 ballots known.

Baseball Hall of Fame candidates need to receive 75% approval from voters in order to earn induction.

Ortiz is among three players to receive more than 75% of the public vote, alongside polarizing legends Barry Bonds (77.7%) and Roger Clemens (76.6), both of whom undoubtedly had Hall of Fame worthy careers, but are marred by their respective accusations during the steroid era and, therefore, are in their final year of eligibility to be voted in.

Ortiz and former MLB rival turned broadcast partner Alex Rodriguez headlined this year's list of first-time candidates on the Hall of Fame ballot.

Both Rodriguez and Ortiz are among the 13 first-time candidates and 17 holdovers to be included on the Baseball Writers' Association of America ballot.

The full list of first-time candidates are included below per MLB.com:

Carl Crawford
Prince Fielder
Ryan Howard
Tim Linecum
Justin Morneau
Joe Nathan
David Ortiz
Jake Peavy
A.J. Pierzynski
Alex Rodriguez
Jimmy Rollins
Mark Teixeira

All returning candidates included on this year's ballot are listed below:

Bobby Abreu
Barry Bonds
Mark Buehrle
Roger Clemens
Todd Helton
Tim Hudson
Torii Hunter
Andruw Jones
Jeff Kent
Jonathan Papelbon
Andy Pettitte
Manny Ramirez
Scott Rolen
Curt Schilling
Gary Sheffield
Sammy Sosa
Omar Vizquel
Billy Wagner

All votes must be cast before the deadline of December 31 and voting results will be announced publicly on January 25.

Zero players were elected by the BBWAA in last year's vote.

Y & T

Tuesday, February 27, 2018