Edgar Martinez made his best showing yet in voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but the former Seattle Mariner is still a long way from election.
Martinez received 209 votes in balloting announced Monday by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Candidates needed to be named on 75 percent of the votes cast in order to be elected. Martinez’s name appeared on 36.5 percent of the ballots.
In 2010, his first year of eligibility, Martinez received 195 votes (36.3 percent). Last year, he dropped to 191 votes (32.9).
“I knew that there wasn’t going to be a chance for this year, and I was hoping the votes would be up, and it was a little bit,” Martinez said. “It went back to what it was the first year, so that’s a little bit encouraging. But I didn’t have a lot of expectations, but it was good to see it go up … I’ll just follow it each year and hope it goes up.”
Martinez played in 18 big-league seasons, all with Seattle. He retired after the 2004 season as the Mariners’ all-time leader in games (2,055), hits (2,247), runs (1,219), walks (1,283), extra-base hits (838) and runs batted in (1,261).
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