The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will welcome three new members as part of its 2025 class of players.
Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner will be inducted into the Hall during a July 27 ceremony in Cooperstown, according to voting results released by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
They will be inducted along with Dick Allen and Dave Parker, who were elected in December by the Hall's Classic Baseball Era committee.
Suzuki received votes from all but one of the writers who voted, meaning that former New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera remains the only player to be elected to the Hall unanimously.
Sabathia was elected with 86.8% of the vote and Wagner was elected with 82.5% of the vote. Seventy-five percent of the vote is required for induction into the Hall.
Suzuki and Sabathia were elected in their first year of eligibility. Wagner was elected in his 10th and final year of eligibility.
Suzuki was already a superstar in his native Japan when he came over to play in MLB for the Seattle Mariners before the 2001 season, and he immediately achieved stardom in his rookie season in the United States, becoming just the second player to win both Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards in the same season. He led the American League in batting average, hits and stolen bases.
Suzuki went on to play parts of 19 seasons in MLB with the Mariners, Yankees and Miami Marlins. He topped the vaunted 3,000 hit plateau with 3,089 career hits, despite starting his career in the U.S. at the age of 27. He holds the MLB record for most hits in a single season, with 262, a feat he achieved in 2004. He was a 10-time All-Star, a 10-time Gold Glove Award winner for excellence in the field and a three-time Silver Slugger award winner.
He's now the first Japanese player chosen for the Hall.
“I don’t think anybody in this whole world thought that I would be a Hall of Famer,” Suzuki said. “As a baseball player, this is definitely the top of the top.”
Sabathia also spent 20 seasons in the majors. He amassed 251 wins and 3,093 strikeouts in more than 3,500 career innings.
He started his career in Cleveland, where he won 106 games over seven-plus seasons and was the AL Cy Young Award winner in 2007. He was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers midway through the 2008 season and went 11-2 with a 1.65 ERA in 17 starts down the stretch, He pitched a complete game victory on the last game of the season to get the Brewers into the playoffs for the first time in 26 years.
With Sabathia, the Brewers franchise now has nine players elected to the Hall of Fame.
“What CC Sabathia did for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2008 will forever be remembered as he put the team on his shoulders and carried us to our first postseason appearance in 26 years,” said former Brewers General Manager Doug Melvin in a release. “CC pitched on three-days rest a number of times that season. It was the most unselfish performance I have ever seen from someone who looked beyond his free agency to lift our entire organization and fan base to a high level of excitement.”
That offseason, Sabathia signed the largest contract for a pitcher in baseball history at the time – seven years and $161 million – with the Yankees. The Bronx Bombers won the World Series in Sabathia’s first season in pinstripes, in which he led the American League with 19 wins. He would lead the AL in wins again in 2010 with 21, the only time he topped the 20-win mark in his career. Sabathia would pitch for the Yankees through 2019, and retired after that season.
Sabathia originally almost retired after the Game 7 loss to Houston in the 2017 AL Championship Series but was persuaded to keep playing when MLB Network's Harold Reynolds explained how close his statistics were to Hall level.
After adopting a cutter to compensate for diminished velocity, Sabathia won 37 games in his final four seasons.
"I turned myself into my version of Jamie Moyer, is what I felt like: backdoor sliders, changeups, cutters on your hands, two-seamers off the plate," he said. “I fought it for a long time. When you’re a guy that is throwing 94, 95 (mph) your whole life, it's hard to buy in.”
Wagner, who played for the Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves during his 16-year career, was one of the most dominant relief pitchers in MLB history. His 422 saves rank eighth all time. The seven-time All-Star struck out 1,196 hitters across 903 innings pitched during his career – a rate of 11.9 per nine innings, which is the best rate overall for any pitcher who threw at least 900 innings during their career.
His struggles in the postseason, however, may have played a part in why he had to wait until the 10th and final ballot to get elected. In 14 career postseason appearances, he allowed 13 earned runs across 11.2 innings – an ERA of 10.03.
The player who came closest to induction without meeting the threshold was Carlos Beltrán, who came up 19 votes short of induction, receiving 70.3% of the votes. Beltrán, who played for the Kansas City Royals, Astros, Mets, San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, Yankees and Texas Rangers during his 20-year career, was one of the more complete players of his era. He was a nine-time All-Star, a three-time Gold Glove Award winner and a two-time Silver Slugger award winner.
He won his first and only World Series championship during the last season of his career, in 2017, during a second stint with Houston. However, that title ended up mired in controversy for both Beltrán and the Astros after it was revealed that the team had concocted a sign-stealing scheme involving banging on trash can lids during the season. Beltrán was the only player implicated in an MLB report on the scandal, and his role may have delayed his election to the Hall.
Outfielder Andruw Jones also came close to election, receiving 66.2% of the vote. A longtime Atlanta Brave who also played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers, Chicago White Sox and Yankees, Jones won 10 Gold Gloves and made five All-Star appearances during his 17-year MLB career.
Alex Rodríguez and Manny Ramírez, two superstars who had tremendous careers but who also tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during their careers, fell well short of the threshold to be elected. Rodríguez received 37.1% of the vote, while Ramírez received 34.3% of the vote.