When Greatness Is Not Enough: Andruw Jones and the Character Clause

Why one of the best defensive players ever is struggling to get in on his 9th ballot

Ballots are being released ahead of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 announcement next Tuesday. To date, 179 Baseball Writers’ Association of America voters have shared their ballot publicly, often with an explanation of who they voted for and why.

Former Atlanta Braves outfielder Andruw Jones, in his 9th year on the ballot, is pacing towards induction on the public ballots with a 84.7% mark. The private ballot totals, however, have yet to be announced and typically have resulted in his vote share dropping every year, taking him under the 75% threshold required for induction.

Let’s talk about why.

The baseball case for Jones makes sense

To put it simply, Jones is one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball history while also being one of its best power hitters. He finished his career with ten Gold Gloves and 434 home runs, leading the entire league with 51 in 2005 on his way to being the runner-up for National League Most Valuable Player.

And when you look at just those accomplishments by themselves, they make a pretty compelling case.

Every outfielder who won more Gold Gloves than Jones, Willie Mays (12) and Roberto Clemente (12), were inducted into the Hall of Fame on their first ballot.

Every other outfielder who won exactly ten Gold Gloves - Ken Griffey Jr., Ichiro Suzuki, and Al Kaline - was inducted into the Hall of Fame on their first ballot.

Every other player who has ten or more Gold Gloves and four hundred homers is in the Hall of Fame - Griffey, Mays, and Mike Schmidt. And yes, they were all first ballot inductees.

And please know that I don’t call him one of the best defensive outfielders in history lightly.

The defensive stats say that - Jones has fifty more runs saved in his career over Willie Mays, per Baseball Reference, and 30 more than Roberto Clemente.

His teammates say that - Tom Glavine called him “the best defensive center fielder of our generation.”

His fellow defenders in the pantheon of generationally great outfield defense reportedly said that, with Terry Pendleton relaying a quote from Willie Mays to David O’Brien of The Athletic: “I was standing by the batting cage in San Francisco when I heard Willie Mays tell Andruw Jones that he’s the best he’d ever seen,” said Pendleton, who was Atlanta’s hitting coach at the time. “So I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, did I just hear what I just heard?’ Yes, I did hear what I just heard.”

But there are still questions.

While Jones never won an MVP award, leading all of baseball with 51 homers and the NL with 128 RBI in 2005 got him a MVP runner-up finish to Albert Pujols, as well as his fourth All-Star nod and his first career Silver Slugger in centerfield. He has four other MVP finishes, as well as five total All-Star selections.

Outside of the lack of league-wide awards, the most commonly cited negative mark is about how he seemingly “dropped off” after age 30. From his debut through 2006, his age-30 season, Jones averaged 33 homers and 100 RBI per season while hitting .263/.343/.498. Starting at age 31 until he called it quits after the 2012 season at 35, Jones hit just .210/.316/.424 while breaking 100 games just once and hitting 66 homers in total.

There’s a very clear and obvious explanation here, however - when he started his career. Andruw debuted just three or so months after turning 19, being the youngest player in MLB history to hit a home run in a postseason game. His “prime” was an entire decade, from his age 20 season through age 29, and an average of 158 regular season games per season. So while he fell off after the age of 30, it was his 13th season in the league.

If you shift Andruw’s debut to the age of 22 and start his decline at age 33, it’s likely the discussion of his rapid and early decline largely evaporate.

But that’s not the biggest issue with Andruw’s candidacy.

The Character Clause

The recent history for Jones’ Hall of Fame candidacy has been for the outfielder to be near or above the 75% threshold for induction on the publicly-shared ballots prior to the Hall of Fame’s announcement, only to fall below the required threshold once the non-public vote results are tallied and shared. Last season, roughly 55.1% of voters released their ballot publicly before the announcement.

(Hall of Fame voters aren’t required to disclose or share their ballot. The ballot itself has a selectable option to let the BBWAA share the ballot 14 days after results are announced, but it is not required and the Hall of Fame has a policy to never disclose a voter’s ballot. Last season, a total of 84.5% of ballots eventually became public.)

And those anonymous and/or undisclosed ballots don’t often go towards Jones.

The BBWAA voters are instructed to consider a player’s “record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”

And the mention of character complicates the Hall of Fame case for several players, with Jones being one of them.

Why the character clause gets invoked

There are a few reasons why voters leave a ‘deserving’ candidate off their ballots, invoking the character clause to do so.

PEDs: There is a subset of the game’s most statistically accomplished players who have not and likely will not be elected to the Hall of Fame by the voters, and it’s players who are tainted by performance-enhancing drug allegations. Sometimes it’s players who are strongly linked but not proven to have used, like Barry Bonds - his 762 career home runs and 71 single-season home runs (2001) both stand as the highest respective marks in baseball history, but he’s not in the Hall of Fame. The outfielder was linked to a prominent steroid production facility called “BALCO” in the early 2000s, and while he is not known to have failed a drug test, many voters consider him to have been guilty of taking performance-enhancing drugs and have left him off their ballots. Bonds maxed out at 66% of votes in his tenth and final year of eligibility in 2022 and received less than the required five votes in 2025’s Contemporary Era committee vote to be reconsidered before 2031. Other players seemingly being held responsible under this same justification include Alex Rodriguez, Jose Canseco, Gary Sheffield, and Sammy Sosa.

Cheating: Several of the game’s top historic players have either been barred from eligibility or have not been selected to the Hall of Fame due to allegations and/or admitted instances of cheating or other “integrity of the game” violations. Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader, was famously banned from the game for betting on baseball while playing and managing, although that punishment was lifted after his death in 2024.

And then there’s Jones. He’s one of the players who are having the character clause applied to them for non-baseball transgressions. Jones was arrested in December of 2012 on charges of battery after a physical altercation with his wife on Christmas morning. Per ESPN’s story, published the next day, Jones dragged his wife down a staircase and grabbed her by the throat during a disagreement, expressing a desire to kill her. Gwinnett County police reported he was “heavily intoxicated” at the time, per the officer in charge of the response to the wife’s 911 call, and he was eventually taken to the Gwinnett County Detention Center. After being booked and released on bond, he was charged with domestic battery and later pleaded guilty. He paid a fine and was released in time to play baseball in Japan that season.

Andruw’s defenders, of which there are many in and around Atlanta, like to point out that Jones and wife eventually reconciled and are still married to this day. However, to many, that’s not enough to override the severity of his actions.

Last year, many of the private voters presumably cited the character clause to withhold their vote from Andruw - his public-to-private vote total dropped by 26%, the 2nd-highest drop on the entire 2025 ballot, and brought him to a 66.2% total.

And it’s clear that many voters still have not or will not dismiss the arrest. The Athletic’s Tim Britton, contributing to the outlet’s ballot disclosure article, explained that he just can’t overlook the severity of Jones’ transgression.

“On the field, Jones would be an easy ‘yes’ for me. Despite the plunge his value took as soon as he was in his 30s, he was a player of immense defensive value who also happened to hit more than 400 home runs.

However, I view Jones’ 2012 arrest for battery against his then-wife, and his subsequent guilty plea to a related disorderly conduct charge, as disqualifying — obviously more so than Beltrán’s involvement with the Astros’ cheating scandal.

I understand and accept that many of you will view this as sanctimonious. I agree that it would be simpler to limit my perspective to only what happened on the field. But induction into the Hall of Fame is the sport’s greatest honor, and the Hall instructs voters to consider a player’s character and integrity when deciding whether to immortalize them with a bronze plaque. By that standard, Jones falls short for me.”

On the note of Carlos Beltran - the veteran outfielder was the only player named in the league’s report on the Houston Astros sign-stealing scheme during the 2017 season, being identified as a key figure. Despite the allegations, which he acknowledged¹ after “parting ways” with the New York Mets (who he was set to manage the next season), he’s currently at 89.9% on the public tracker in his fourth year of eligibility.

Whether or not Andruw will find enough support among newer voters who give more weight to his exemplary defensive metrics, including the long-time staff of MLB.com (who all received voting privileges just this year), remains to be seen. But if he doesn’t ultimately meet the threshold for induction in either this or his final year of voting, we’ll understand the likely reason why.

1. From Beltran’s statement: “As a veteran player on the team, I should’ve recognized the severity of the issue and truly regret the actions that were taken. I am a man of faith and integrity and what took place did not demonstrate those characteristics that are so very important to me and my family. I’m very sorry. It’s not who I am as a father, a husband, a teammate and as an educator.