Edgar hopes to ride ballot momentum into Cooperstown

SEATTLE — For Edgar Martinez and his Hall of Fame supporters, the clock is ticking. But his peers are also talking, and that could be a good thing for his candidacy for enshrinement in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Martinez, the former Mariners great and the team’s current hitting coach, was again among the players on the 2017 Hall of Fame ballot released on Monday by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

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For the 53-year-old Martinez, this is his eighth year on the ballot. It means he’s down to his final three chances to reach the necessary 75-percent voting threshold for induction before he hits the 10-year limit now in place for Hall of Fame ballot eligibility.

But momentum — and support from former players and current Hall of Famers — seemed to grow last year. Martinez was named on 43.4 percent of the writers’ ballots in an election that saw former Mariners teammate Ken Griffey Jr. inducted in his first try.

Martinez’s long-shot bid could be bolstered both by baseball writers’ increasing focus on sabermetric analysis, as well as the growing crescendo of accolades from those who played with and against him — like pitchers Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Mariano Rivera, as well as Griffey himself.

“Edgar deserves to be in,” Griffey said after his own induction last year. “I played with the guy. I know what he’s done.”

Johnson, another former teammate who was inducted into the Hall in 2015 as a member of the D-backs, echoed the same sentiment for the man he played alongside for 10 seasons in Seattle.

“I’ve never seen a better hitter, a better pure hitter,” said the Big Unit. “That’s no disrespect to other teammates I’ve had or people I’ve played against. But anyone from that era who watched Edgar realizes what a good hitter he was. I’ll be pulling for him, because I …

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