POLL: Will Edgar Martinez get into the Hall of Fame?

The day of reckoning is fast approaching for Edgar Martinez.

The Seattle Mariners legend’s Baseball Hall of Fame fate will be announced on Wednesday, Jan. 24, when the results of the voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America are revealed. As things stand now Martinez’s enshrinement is balancing on the edge of a knife.

Martinez is the darling of Mariners baseball. He starred for Seattle from 1987-2004, compiling a .312 batting average, 309 home runs and a .933 OPS while remaining with one organization his entire professional career. He’s still a Mariner to this day, as he currently serves as the team’s hitting coach. Heck, the street Safeco Field is located on is now named after him. If this poll were about whether Edgar should be in the Hall of Fame, I’m sure the answer would be, “Yes,” in a landslide.

But this poll isn’t about whether Martinez should be in the Hall of Fame, it’s about whether you think he’s going to make it.

Thanks to Ryan Thibodaux on Twitter, we have a compilation of votes that have been made public. Through Sunday 184 of an estimated 424 votes had been released. Of those ballots, Martinez was named on 149 of them, which is 81.0 percent. That has Edgar above the 75-percent threshold required for election.

However, the historical voting trends are that the voters who believe in a smaller Hall of Fame tend to turn their ballots in later. Martinez is not a favorite among the small-Hall contingent, largely because he was mostly a designated hitter. Therefore, it’s believed Edgar’s percentage will trend down from here. But he’s still expected to be real close. Here are some of the projections:

My updated Hall of Fame predictions with 182 ballots currently in @NotMrTibbs tracker. pic.twitter.com/WLPvY3m7wN

— Ross Carey (@Rosscarey) January 12, 2018

#MLB My latest projections based on @NotMrTibbs #HOF Tracker. Things are starting to lock in. pic.twitter.com/iQjSkmWhBi

— Scott Lindholm 📊 (@ScottLindholm) January 10, 2018

#HOF projections through 178 ballots. Plus ça change… https://t.co/FSee2RMBZM pic.twitter.com/E9cH2FK2se

— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) January 10, 2018

This is Martinez’s ninth year on the ballot, meaning if he doesn’t get in this year he has just one more year to make it. His yearly trend line is strongly upward, going from 27.0 percent in 2015 to 43.3 percent in 2016 to 58.6 percent last year. Therefore, if he falls short this year there’s a good chance momentum will carry him over the line next year. If that doesn’t happen, he’ll have to depend on the Eras Committee for selection in the future.

With that said, he still has a good chance at getting the votes he needs this year. So what do you think? When does Martinez get his name called by the Hall of Fame?