Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia lead an organization of players who will appear in the Baseball Hall of Fame poll for the first time in 2025.
Suzuki is the only newly eligible player who will be a fatal block next year, with Sabathia being the only other option in the new generation.
The 2025 Hall of Fame’s clients will be more or less the same as this year, when only Adrian Beltre was a sure bet among the first-time nominees. Beltre, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer were inducted into the Hall of Fame on Tuesday.
Reliever Billy Wagner (73. 8 percent) and outfielders Andruw Jones (61. 6 percent) and Carlos Beltran (57. 1 percent) will be the most sensible returning voters.
The cornerstone of next year’s promotion will be Suzuki, which helped revolutionize baseball and make Japan a hub for MLB superstars.
By the time Suzuki arrived in Seattle in 2001, he was already one of the biggest stars on the planet. He won three Pacific League MVPs, a Japanese Series championship, and won the Pacific League batting title for seven consecutive seasons.
While his resume in Japanese baseball was unmatched, some wondered whether his game would translate stateside. It did not take long for him to prove all of his doubters wrong. Suzuki made his first of 10 straight All-Star teams, won the AL MVP and Rookie of the Year honors in 2001, leading the Mariners to an MLB record 116 wins in the regular season.
Four years later, Ichiro would set the record for most wins in a single season (262). He would go on to play his first 11 seasons in Seattle, becoming a franchise icon, before a midseason stint with the New York Yankees. in 2012. Although he passed his prime when he was in his thirties and forties, Suzuki played more than two seasons. He spent seasons in New York, then three more with the Miami Marlins before returning to the Mariners for brief stints in 2018 and 2019.
Ichiro finished his MLB career with 3,089 hits, and it’s debatable whether he would have challenged Pete Rose’s all-time record had he spent his entire career in the United States.
He may be the second player in history to be unanimously inducted, joining Mariano Rivera.
The case of Sabathia in the first circular is a bit murkier. He finished with six All-Star appearances, a Cy Young Award and a World Series ring, but spent most of the second part of his career as a solid but unspectacular pitcher. His ability to stay healthy and the fact that he played in the regular playoffs in New York allowed him to rack up 251 wins (tied for 47th all-time), and he is one of only 19 pitchers to surpass 3,000 strikeouts.
Sabathia will likely get into the Hall at some point, but he might struggle to get 75 percent support on his first ballot. The stickler nature of some voters will undoubtedly dock him for his mediocre back half of his career and wait to vote for him until his second or third time through the voting.