Ichiro, CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner Elected To Hall Of Fame

The Hall of Fame announced the results of this year’s Baseball Writers Association of America voting. Ichiro, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner topped the 75% threshold for induction. They’ll join Dick Allen and Dave Parker in the 2025 class. Allen and Parker were elected by the Classic Baseball Era committee at the Winter Meetings. Ichiro appeared on 99.7% of the ballots, falling one vote shy of unanimity.

Two of the three inductees, Ichiro and Sabathia, get into Cooperstown on their first year on the ballot. Wagner gets in on his 10th and final opportunity. He’d fallen just a percentage point shy last winter and jumped beyond an 82% vote share with the writers having their last chance to elect him.

Ichiro starred in his home country before making the move to the big leagues during the 2000-01 offseason. He signed a three-year deal with the Mariners and immediately became one of the best players in franchise history. Ichiro led the majors with 242 hits and 56 stolen bases. He hit .350 to win the AL batting title at the top of a loaded Seattle lineup. The ’01 Mariners won 116 games and remain the greatest regular season team in MLB history. They lost a five-game Championship Series to the Yankees.

That was one of the best debut seasons ever. Ichiro was an All-Star and won a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove award in right field. He not only coasted to the Rookie of the Year award but narrowly surpassed Jason Giambi to win the MVP. He joined Fred Lynn as the only rookies to be named the Most Valuable Player.

While that’d be the only time that Ichiro finished top five in MVP balloting, he was the game’s best pure hitter for a decade. He topped 200 hits with an average north of .300 in each of his first 10 seasons. He had arguably his best season in 2004, when he led the majors with a .372 average and tallied a career-best 262 hits. Ichiro was a menace on the bases throughout his prime, topping 30 stolen bases on 10 occasions. He was also the sport’s best defensive right fielder, pairing plus range with an elite arm and twice leading the AL in outfield assists.

An incredibly durable player, Ichiro topped 150 games played in 13 seasons. He led the majors in hits seven times and was selected to the All-Star Game in each of his first 10 years in the big leagues. Ichiro remained an excellent player through his age-36 season. He played all the way until age 45, seeing action with the Yankees and Marlins. Ichiro collected his 3000th career hit while he was playing for Miami, doing it in style with a triple against Colorado’s Chris Rusin at Coors Field. Ichiro returned to Seattle for the end of his career, capping it off in a two-game series between the Mariners and A’s in front of Japanese fans at the Tokyo Dome to kick off the 2019 season.

Ichiro finished his major league career as a .311 hitter who tallied 3089 hits. That’d be a remarkable achievement for any player but is especially impressive for one who spent a few of his prime-aged seasons in NPB and didn’t make his major league debut until he was 27. Ichiro was never a huge power threat in games, though many believe that he could’ve been an impact power bat had he prioritized that over elite pure hitting ability. In any case, he concluded with 117 career homers and stole more than 500 bases. He won 10 Gold Gloves and three Silver Slugger awards.

Sabathia was a first-round pick by the Indians in 1998. He was in the majors within three years of being selected out of high school. He won 17 games during his rookie season and finished as the runner-up behind Ichiro in ’01 Rookie of the Year voting. The southpaw was a durable mid-rotation arm for Cleveland for the first few seasons of his career. He earned consecutive All-Star nods in 2003 and ’04.

While he was on track for a very good major league career, Sabathia didn’t look like a future Hall of Famer. That changed in the second half of the 2000s. Sabathia turned in a 3.22 ERA over 28 starts in 2006. He cemented himself as the game’s top workhorse the following year. Sabathia led the majors with 241 innings across 34 starts in ’07. He topped 200 strikeouts for the first time and turned in a 3.21 ERA while winning 19 games. He earned his third All-Star selection and won the Cy Young. He helped the Indians to the postseason for the first time in six years, though he struggled in two starts in the ALCS as they were knocked off by the Red Sox.

Cleveland wasn’t on a playoff track in 2008. Sabathia was an impending free agent whom the Indians had no expectation of re-signing. They traded him to the Brewers a few weeks before the deadline for a prospect package led by Matt LaPorta. While LaPorta didn’t work out, the unheralded acquisition of Michael Brantley as a “lesser” piece of that deal had a huge impact on Cleveland baseball.

Sabathia’s stint in Milwaukee was brief but could hardly have gone better. The southpaw had a legendary second half, winning 11 games with a 1.65 ERA in 17 starts. Sabathia remarkably completed seven of those starts and recorded three shutouts. He more or less carried Milwaukee to a 90-win season and a Wild Card berth, though they were bounced by the eventual champion Phillies in the Division Series. Sabathia finished that year with a career-high 253 innings and 251 strikeouts with a 2.70 earned run average. He finished fifth in NL Cy Young voting even though he spent half the season in the American League.

The following offseason, Sabathia signed with the Yankees on a seven-year, $161MM megadeal. He tossed 230 innings of 3.37 ERA ball and won an MLB-best 19 games in his first season. He followed up with a 1.98 ERA across five postseason starts, winning the ALCS MVP award while helping the Yanks to their 27th World Series title. Sabathia would respectively win 21 and 19 games over the next two years, topping 230 innings with a low-3.00s ERA in both. He finished in the top four in Cy Young voting in each of his first three seasons in pinstripes.

He earned his final All-Star nod in 2012 and reached 200 innings for the last time in ’13. Sabathia remained in the Bronx on a series of short-term deals after the expiration of his first free agent contract. He remained a capable back-end starter until his retirement in 2019. Sabathia finished his career with nearly 3600 innings over parts of 19 seasons. He posted a 3.74 ERA, won 251 games, and recorded more than 3000 strikeouts. His 3093 punchouts rank 18th on the all-time leaderboard.

More to come.