The 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame class will include Ichiro Suzuki. Rightfully so, of course, and it's always nice to have at least one player in a class where there just doesn't need to be much discussion.
In fact, most of the discussion in Ichiro's case so far has revolved around whether or not he'll be a unanimous selection.
My prediction is he won't be and we won't hear from the voter(s) who leave him off. Given that I'm an open book, as regular readers know, it won't be me. I'm voting for him.
How could anyone not vote for Ichiro?
The (easy) case
After hitting a ridiculous .353/.421/.522 with 1,278 hits in nine seasons in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball, Ichiro came to Major League Baseball for his age-27 season. How many more MLB hits he could have racked up if he had come over to MLB earlier is open for debate, but he hit .350 with 242 hits in his first season stateside, winning the Rookie of the Year and MVP.
He would go on to lead the majors in hits seven times. Ty Cobb led eight times while Pete Rose, Tony Gwynn and Ichiro led the majors seven times. That's the company he's keeping.
Some more hits accolades for Mr. Suzuki:
- No other player led the majors in hits five straight seasons. He did so 2006-2010.
- He reached 200+ hits 10 times. The only other player to do that was Rose.
- Ichiro reached 220 hits five times. No one else did it more than four (Rogers Hornsby and Jesse Burkett).
- The only players to reach 240 hits in two separate seasons were Ichiro and George Sisler. Only 11 other players even did it once.
- The single-season record for hits is 262, which Suzuki set in 2004.
- He ranks 25th in MLB history with 3,089 hits. Again, consider that he wasn't even in the league until age 27.
I've seen some people combine the NPB and MLB hits to give Ichiro 4,367 hits in his career. To each their own here, but the point is, we're talking about one of the greatest hit machines in baseball history, if not the greatest.
Through his prime, the first 10 years of his MLB career, Ichiro averaged 224 hits per season, which is simply an outrageous number. For a point of reference, Bobby Witt Jr. led the majors with 211 hits this past season and the only other player to reach 200 was Luis Arráez with exactly 200.
Again, Ichiro averaged 224 for a decade.
Even if you wanted to argue that he was a one-trick pony, being that freaking good at the one trick is worthy of the Hall of Fame. There's more, though.
In that decade, he was so durable that he averaged 159 games per season. He also posted a .331 batting average for that entire 10-year span.
Want more? He topped 100 runs scored eight times and reached 1,420 in his MLB career. He stole at least 25 bases 12 times, getting to 509 in his career, good for 35th in MLB history.
Defensively, he took home 10 Gold Gloves, rarely made errors, displayed tremendous range and had a cannon for an arm. He led the league in assists twice and topped 10 outfield assists four times.
If there was any knock, it would be his lack of power, but he was a table-setter, so that doesn't really matter. He ended up with 362 doubles, 96 triples and 117 home runs. Rod Carew had 445 doubles, 112 triples and 92 homers. Lloyd Waner had 281 doubles, 118 triples and 27 homers. It's fine here.
Suzuki ranks 21st all-time in WAR among right fielders and 17th in JAWS. Both figures are below the average Hall of Fame right fielder, but not substantially so.
I don't think the type of people who look heavily at WAR and JAWS would be the type to leave Ichiro off the ballot due to the shortfall there, though I could be wrong. My hunch is it'll happen for other reasons.
The nonsense in the 'unanimous' discussion
First off, my feeling is a player is either a Hall of Famer or not. I don't get into the distinction of "first ballot" or not because there's the looming possibility that refusing to vote for a player could result in him falling off the ballot. And why? Because you don't view him on this fictional extra tier above? Either a player is a Hall of Famer or not. We don't even separate out the Veteran's Committee guys from the BBWAA guys. They are all just Hall of Famers.
Still, there are always those voters out there who have taken it upon themselves to deem a player unworthy of the "first ballot" distinction and I suppose Ichiro's lack of power could draw the attention of these folks.
More prominently, though, will be the mindset that "(insert whichever player you want aside from Mariano Rivera) wasn't unanimous, and Ichiro wasn't better than him, so he shouldn't be unanimous either."
To combat that argument, here's the top 10 list of highest vote percentages ever:
- Mariano Rivera, 100%
- Derek Jeter, 99.7
- Ken Griffey Jr., 99.3
- Tom Seaver, 98.8
- Nolan Ryan, 98.8
- Cal Ripken Jr., 98.5
- Ty Cobb, 98.2
- George Brett, 98.2
- Hank Aaron, 97.8
- Tony Gwynn, 97.6
If you went to rank the 10 greatest players in MLB history, only Aaron would make the list. Maybe Cobb, too, if you found your way around him playing in a segregated league. None of the other eight all-time great players would make the top 10 best ever.
This is to say that it is not a ranking!
It isn't up to voters to litigate whether or not Ichiro should be placed up there in that tier. It just doesn't matter. No one, not even Mariano himself, believes Mariano Rivera is the greatest baseball player who ever lived.
Suzuki's induction should be less about a unanimous vote and more about a coronation. He was truly an upper-tier, all-time great batsmith who deserves to have nothing but praise heading to his rightful enshrinement in Cooperstown next summer.
We all know better, of course, don't we? There'll be plenty of hair-splitting arguments about whether or not he's worthy of a unanimous selection. There will be hate directed at anyone who doesn't check his box on the ballot. And he'll still get 95+% of the vote and become a Hall of Famer.
That's really all that matters:
Ichiro Suzuki, Hall of Famer
