Could Ichiro Suzuki become the second player ever voted unanimously into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum? Will Billy Wagner pick up the five votes he missed last year to gain entry into his final year of eligibility? Will CC Sabathia reach Cooperstown on its first try?
Heading into the announcement of the Hall of Fame voting results on Jan. 21, all three scenarios are on the table.
The voting is conducted by the nearly 400 voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America; all 151 ballots are registered to Ryan Thibodaux’s Baseball Hall of Fame tracker starting Tuesday afternoon, have the box next to Suzuki’s name checked.
So far, only famed Yankee closer Mariano Rivera has been unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame – 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 miss any ballots yet and I suspect we won’t see them until the results are announced,” Thibodaux said in a direct message on Bluesky earlier this week. “If someone left it behind, we probably won’t find out until afterwards, if at all.”
Jeter missed one ballot in 2020 and Griffey missed three in 2016.
Voters are not required to make their ballot public, but the Hall of Fame does offer voters the opportunity to check a box on the ballot to release their selection after the vote is announced. A total of 385 ballots were returned last year, with 306 voters choosing to make their ballots public. Neither the voter who passed over Jeter in 2020 nor the three who left Griffey off their ballot in 2016 have been revealed.
Suzuki is not the only candidate leaning towards induction. Sabathia is at 140, or 92.7 percent, which bodes well for the first-year nominee.
“I have to admit I’m a little surprised by the strength of CC’s support so far. I had been eyeing him as perhaps a 75 percent bubble candidate, but he has held up well so far, sitting comfortably in the low 90s for most of the election season,” Thibodaux wrote. “Unless the deceased public and private voters have a very different assessment of Sabathia’s credentials, it appears he will be a Hall of Famer on the first ballot.”
FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe, author of “The Cooperstown Casebook,” said he was surprised by Sabathia’s turnout in his first year of voting.
“I thought he would be someone who would come in like (Joe) Mauer did last year,” said Jaffe, who created the Jaffe War Score System (JAWS) often referenced by Hall of Fame voters to help candidates in eligible historical perspective. “I don’t expect it to stay at 92 percent or even 90 percent, but I think something above 80 percent is very likely.”
Wagner is on the ballot for the tenth and final time. After just missing the 75 percent mark a year ago, he is steadily leaning toward induction. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was on 84.1 percent of public ballots.
It’s not just the raw numbers that favor Wagner; the trends are also behind him. After narrowly missing the results, he was added to eight voting rounds that he did not attend last year. Of the 141 public votes submitted, no one who checked his name last year did not select him this year. Another eight new voters also voted for Wagner.
“There are still more first-time voters and he will need solid support from that group,” Thibodaux wrote. “There are probably also a few dozen voters this year who have aged beyond the electorate. If he has extremely strong support among them, there may still be work to be done to get him across the finish line.”
Carlos Beltrán had 79.5 percent of the votes on Tuesday afternoon and Andruw Jones was just below the threshold with 74.2 percent. According to Thibodaux, those who made their ballots public last year 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 started tracking elections in 2012, said these trends have remained steady over the years.
The current voting figures are not encouraging for Beltrán or Jones in relation to their expectations for 2025, but are positive for the eventual introduction. In next year’s first-year eligible class, there are no players with 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 only Sabathia, but also Andy Pettitte, Félix Hernández, Mark Buehrle and Hamels.
“Andy Pettitte and Félix Hernández are almost diametrically opposed to each other when it comes to how they got to this point. Pettitte with a very professional career and a tremendous amount of postseason work that was very important in helping teams reach and win the World Series. Jaffe said. “Félix had a very high peak and lack of longevity, early burnout and no postseason experience.”
Pettitte, which was 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 on 48 ballots, indicating a significant jump. Hernández had won 25.2 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot as of Tuesday afternoon.
While the focus of voting is always on the 75 percent threshold needed for induction, the other point we need to pay attention to is the 5 percent needed to remain on the ballot.
Of the fourteen names that appeared on the ballot for the first time, seven had not yet been publicly voted on as of Tuesday morning. Of the remaining seven eligible first-year players, only Suzuki, Sabathia, Hernández and Dustin Pedroia (12.6 percent) received the necessary five percent to remain on the ballot.
That means 10 players are in danger of falling off the ballot, including a pair of catchers, Russell Martin (4.6 percent) and Brian McCann (4 percent), who would fall off the ballot after their first year. 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, are also at risk of not getting 5 percent . Mark Buehrle has 19 votes on his fifth ballot as of Tuesday morning, which will be enough to keep him on the ballot for another year as long as no more than 380 ballots are returned. Another 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)