Could Ichiro Suzuki become the second-ever player unanimously voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum? Will Billy Wagner pick up the five votes he missed last year to gain entry in his final year of eligibility? Will CC Sabathia make it to Cooperstown on his first try?
Heading into the Jan. 21 announcement of the Hall of Fame voting results, all three scenarios are on the table.
The voting is conducted by the nearly 400 eligible voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America; all of the 151 ballots logged on Ryan Thibodaux’s Baseball Hall of Fame tracker as of Tuesday afternoon have the box next to Suzuki’s name checked.
To this point, only famed Yankee closer Mariano Rivera has been elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously — not Babe Ruth, not Hank Aaron, not Ken Griffey Jr. nor Derek Jeter, just Rivera. Could Suzuki be the second?
Thibodaux said he doesn’t expect an answer to that until after the results are official.
“We haven’t seen him left off of any ballots yet and my guess is we won’t see one up until the results are announced,” Thibodaux said in a direct message on Bluesky earlier this week. “If anyone left him off, we likely won’t find out until after, if at all.”
Jeter was left off one ballot in 2020 and Griffey three in 2016.
Voters are not required to make their ballots public, but the Hall of Fame does allow voters to check a box on the ballot to release their selections following the announcement of the voting. Last year, a total of 385 ballots were returned, with 306 voters choosing to make their ballot public. Neither the voter who passed over Jeter in 2020 nor the three who left Griffey off their ballots in 2016 have been revealed.
Suzuki is not the only candidate trending towards induction. Sabathia is on 140, or 92.7 percent, which bodes well for the first-year nominee.
“I’ll admit to being a bit surprised at the strength of CC’s support so far. I had him eyeballed as perhaps a 75 percent bubble candidate, but he’s breezed along so far and has comfortably been in the low 90s for most of ballot season,” Thibodaux wrote. “Unless the late public and private voters have a wildly different evaluation of Sabathia’s credentials, it looks like he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.”
FanGraphs’s Jay Jaffe, author of “The Cooperstown Casebook,” said he’s been surprised by Sabathia’s showing in his first year on the ballot.
“I thought he was going to be somebody who would squeak in like (Joe) Mauer did last year,” said Jaffe, who created the Jaffe War Score system (JAWS) that is commonly referenced by Hall of Fame voters to help put candidates into historical perspective. “I don’t expect him to stay at 92 percent or even 90 percent, but I think something upwards of 80 percent is very likely.”
Wagner is on the ballot for the 10th and final time. After just missing the 75 percent mark a year ago, he’s trending steadily toward induction. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was at 84.1 percent on the public ballots.
It’s not just the raw numbers that are in Wagner’s favor; the trends are behind him, as well. After just missing out, he’s been added to eight ballots that didn’t include him last year and of the 141 public votes submitted, none who checked his name last year haven’t selected him this year. Another eight first-time voters have voted for Wagner, as well.
“There are still more first-time voters out there and he’ll need to maintain solid support from that group,” Thibodaux wrote. “There are also likely several dozen voters who aged out of the electorate this year. If he happened to have extremely strong support among them, then there still may be work to do to get him over the finish line.”
Carlos Beltrán was at 79.5 percent of the vote as of Tuesday afternoon and Andruw Jones was just below the threshold at 74.2 percent. According to Thibodaux, last year those who made their ballots public before the announcement averaged 7.55 votes per ballot. Voters who waited until after the announcement averaged 6.77 votes per ballot and private ballots averaged 5.8 names. Thibodaux, who began tracking balloting in 2012, said those trends have been steady through the years.
The current voting totals are not encouraging for Beltrán or Jones in relation to their 2025 hopes, but it is a positive for eventual induction. Next year’s first-year eligible class doesn’t have any players who have a career bWAR of 60 or more, such as Suzuki (60) and Sabathia (62.3). The top first-year players on next year’s ballot are Cole Hamels (59 bWAR) and Ryan Braun (47.1 bWAR).
Jaffe said the strength of Sabathia’s support bodes well for the future of not just Sabathia, but also Andy Pettitte, Félix Hernández, Mark Buehrle and Hamels.
“Andy Pettitte and Félix Hernández are almost diametrically opposed in terms of how they’ve gotten to this point, Pettitte with a very workmanlike career and a huge volume of postseason work that was very important in helping teams get to and win the World Series,” Jaffe said. “Félix had a very high peak and a lack of longevity, early burnout and no postseason experience.”
Pettitte, on the ballot for the seventh time, was at 31.8 percent as of Tuesday afternoon. Last year, Pettitte received 52 (13.5 percent) votes and this year he is already marked on 48 ballots, indicating a significant jump. Hernández, in his first year on the ballot, was on 25.2 percent of the votes revealed by Tuesday afternoon.
While the focus on voting is always on the 75 percent line needed for induction, the other marker to watch is the 5 percent needed to stay on the ballot.
Of the 14 names on the ballot for the first time, seven had not received a public vote as of Tuesday morning. Of the remaining seven first-year eligible players, only Suzuki, Sabathia, Hernández and Dustin Pedroia (12.6 percent) have received the necessary five percent to stay on the ballot.
That means 10 players are in danger of falling off the ballot, including a pair of catchers in Russell Martin (4.6 percent) and Brian McCann (4 percent) who would fall off the ballot after just their first year. Also facing the possibility of not receiving 5 percent are Torii Hunter (1.3 percent), who is on the ballot for the fifth time, and Francisco Rodríguez (7.9 percent), who is on the ballot for the third year. Mark Buehrle, on his fifth ballot, has 19 votes as of Tuesday morning, which will be enough to keep him on the ballot another year as long as no more than 380 ballots are returned. One more vote for Buehrle between Tuesday afternoon and next week’s announcement would guarantee the longtime Chicago White Sox starter a spot on next year’s ballot.
(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
