COOPERSTOWN, NY — During his 19-year major league career, Ichiro Suzuki rarely spoke English in public unless it was to express his thoughts about the temperature in Kansas City in August as it pertained to certain rodents. On Sunday in Cooperstown, however, he flawlessly delivered his 19-minute Hall of Fame induction speech in his second language, showing off his sly sense of humor while speaking about the professionalism, respect, and love for the fans that drove his career. “Today, I am feeling something I thought I would never feel again. I am a rookie,” he began, referring to his first seasons with the Orix Blue Wave in 1992 and the Seattle Mariners in 2001. “But please, I am 51 years old now. Easy on the hazing. I don’t need to wear a Hooters uniform again,” he quipped to the 52 returning Hall of Famers, four fellow entrants in the Class of 2025, and the estimated 30,000 people who attended the ceremony at the Clark Sports Center.

“The first two times, it was easier to manage my emotions because my goal was always clear: to play professionally at the highest level,” continued Suzuki. “This time is so different, because I could never imagine as a kid in Japan that my play would lead me to a sacred baseball land that I didn’t even know was here. People often measure me by my records: 3,000 hits, 10 gold gloves, 10 seasons of 200 hits. Not bad, eh?

“But the truth is, without baseball, you would say this guy is such a dumbass. I have bad teammates, right, Bob Costas?”

Elsewhere, Suzuki poked fun at having fallen one vote short of becoming just the second Hall candidate elected unanimously: “Three thousand hits or 262 hits in one season are achievements recognized by the writers. Well… all but one. And by the way, the offer for that writer to have dinner at my home has now expired.” On a more serious note, he advised distinguishing between dreams and goals: “Dreams are not always realistic, but goals can be possible if you think deeply about how to reach them. Dreaming is fun, but goals are difficult and challenging… If you are serious about it, you must think critically about what is necessary to achieve it.” Read the rest of this entry »

It was ugly, it was labor-intensive, it was sobering — and probably humbling. Clayton Kershaw entered Wednesday night’s start in Los Angeles needing just three strikeouts to reach 3,000 for his career. Facing the White Sox, a team with the American League’s worst record (28-57) and the majors’ second-highest strikeout rate against lefties (26.6%), the 37-year-old southpaw repeatedly struggled to get from strike two to strike three, and only reached the milestone on his 100th and final pitch of the night. By the time he caught Vinny Capra looking at a slider on the outside edge of the plate, the Dodgers trailed 4-2, and Max Muncy had just departed with a serious knee injury while applying the tag on an attempted steal of third base. It took a textbook ninth-inning rally for the Dodgers to salvage a victory.

Here’s the big moment:

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Last December, 33 years after he last played, Dave Parker was finally elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The lefty-swinging, righty-throwing “Cobra” had once been regarded as the game’s best all-around player, a 6-foot-5, 230-pound slugger who could hit for power and average, had plenty of speed as well as a strong and accurate throwing arm, and exuded as much charisma and swagger as any player of his era. But injuries, cocaine use, and poor conditioning curtailed his prime, and while he rebounded to complete a lengthy and successful career, in 15 years on the writers’ ballots, he’d never drawn even one-third of the support needed for election. He hadn’t come close in three tries on Era Committee ballots, either, but buoyed by the positive attention he had generated while waging a very public battle with Parkinson’s Disease, and backed by a favorable mix of familiar faces on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, he finally gained entry to the Hall, alongside the late Dick Allen.

Unfortunately, Parker did not live to deliver the speech he said he’d been holding for 15 years. Just shy of one month from the day he was to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, he passed away at age 74 due to complications from Parkinson’s Disease, which he was diagnosed with in 2012.

Parker is the third Hall of Famer to die between election and induction. Eppa Rixey, a lefty who pitched in the National League from 1912 to ’33, was elected by the Veterans Committee on January 27, 1963. He died one month and one day later, at the age of 71. Leon Day, a righty who starred in the Negro Leagues from 1934 to ’46, and later played in Mexico and in the affiliated minor leagues, was elected by the Veterans Committee on March 7, 1995. He died six days later, at the age of 78. Read the rest of this entry »

By most measures, the Rafael Devers trade happened suddenly. It came without advance notice of his availability, and the Red Sox reportedly weren’t shopping him around. Immediately, it drew comparisons to the Luka Dončić-Anthony Davis trade in the NBA, because hardly ever in our scoops-driven media landscape, where even the tiniest rumor is treated as currency, does a transaction involving a superstar catch us by surprise.

And yet, now that the shock has worn off, trading Devers feels like a logical outcome to the saga that began in March, when the Red Sox signed Alex Bregman to play third base without giving the incumbent a heads up. The details of the ensuing rift have been covered at great length, at FanGraphs and elsewhere, so I won’t go into them here. A lot of the reporting since the trade has described the situation in Boston as untenable, and the damage done to the relationship between Devers and the team as irreparable. But based on how badly the Red Sox botched their initial response to the conflict, and then kept bungling their subsequent attempts at reconciliation, from my perspective, it seems like they didn’t make repairing it much of a priority.

We’ll tackle your questions about the Devers trade and so much more in this week’s FanGraphs mailbag. But first, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for next week’s mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Roll over Pete Rose, and tell Shoeless Joe Jackson the news. In an historic decision that reversed over eight decades of precedent, on Tuesday commissioner Rob Manfred formally reinstated Rose, Jackson, and 15 other deceased individuals who had previously been placed on the permanently ineligible list for violating Rule 21, which bars players, umpires, and club and league officials and employees from gambling on baseball. The move opens the door for Rose (and Jackson) to be considered for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but that opportunity won’t come until December 2027 at the earliest. Neither their placement on the Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot nor their election to the Hall is automatic even if they do become candidates, as the Hall’s heavy hand in committee proceedings — particularly with regards to players linked to performance-enhancing drugs — should remind us.

Given the extent to which Rose spent decades lying about his gambling and showing a lack of contrition even after he was banned — to say nothing of the allegations of statutory rape that surfaced in recent years — Manfred’s decision is a bitter disappointment, perhaps even a shock. While his decade-long tenure as commissioner has produced no shortage of grounds for criticism, he appeared to be hyper-conscious when it came to drawing a distinction between Major League Baseball’s recent embrace of legalized gambling, and the lines crossed by those who flouted Rule 21. Last June, Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano was placed on the permanently ineligible list for making 387 baseball bets totaling $150,000 through a legal sports book, while in February, an arbiter upheld the firing of umpire Pat Hoberg for sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player who bet on baseball, and for impeding MLB’s investigation. Rose’s gambling, via bets placed through bookies, was illegal at the time as well as completely out of bounds given his role within baseball.

Manfred’s latest move was driven by the Rose family’s petition to remove Rose — who died last September 30 at the age of 83 — from the permanently ineligible list so that he can be considered for election to the Hall. Rather than just revisit Rose’s eligibility, however, the commissioner chose to issue a broader ruling that erased what had previously been a meaningful distinction between a popularly misunderstood “lifetime ban” (i.e, one ending with the death of the banned individual) and a permanent spot on baseball’s blacklist. Created by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1920, the permanently ineligible list was reserved for those found to have gambled on baseball (plus a few who committed other transgressions Landis viewed as grave) from future participation within the game. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve often said when evaluating the prospects of various controversial candidates for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, “forever” and “never” are very long times. Two reports from the last week could put that assertion to the test. According to ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition from the family of the late Pete Rose requesting that he be removed from the permanently ineligible list, which would clear the way for his consideration for election to the Hall. Separately, on Wednesday the institution announced that its board of directors has adjusted the requirements for Era Committee candidates in a way that could eventually strip some of them of eligibility for future consideration — and could be subject to abuse.

Before addressing the Rose matter, which became politically charged after president Donald Trump posted to social media in support of him on February 28, it’s worth unpacking the ramifications of the Hall’s announcement. On February 26 in Orlando, Florida, chairman Jane Forbes Clark met with the 16-member board of directors (which includes Manfred) to address several matters, including the Era Committee process. Starting with the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot for players, which will be voted on at the Winter Meetings in Orlando in December, candidates who don’t receive at least five out of 16 possible votes will be ineligible to appear on the next ballot three years later, when that particular pool of candidates is considered again. Candidates who don’t receive at least five of 16 votes on multiple Era Committee ballots will no longer be eligible for future consideration, period. To these eyes, the first part of that change is reasonable, but the second is unnecessarily heavy-handed and smacks of punishment — punishment merely for landing on a ballot at the wrong time. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Last week, for the second year in a row, BBWAA voters elected a trio of players to the Hall of Fame, namely first year candidates Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia, plus 10th-year candidate Billy Wagner. Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones both finished within 10 points of election as well, setting themselves up for 2026. With that in mind, it’s time to look ahead to what the next five ballots have in store.

This is the 12th time I’ve broken out my crystal ball in such a manner, dating back to the wrap-up of my 2014 election coverage at SI.com. As of last year, I’ve now done this more times at FanGraphs than Sports Illustrated. That first edition was so long ago that candidates still had 15 years of eligibility instead of 10, and so I could afford to project Tim Raines for election in 2018, his 11th year of eligibility. The Hall’s unilateral decision to truncate candidacies to 10 years would come just months later, though thankfully voters accelerated their acceptance of Raines, who was elected in 2017. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The 2025 Hall of Fame election is in the books, with another trio — first-year candidates Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia joined by 10th-year candidate Billy Wagner — getting voted in by the Baseball Writers Association of America. While Suzuki’s possible unanimity and Carlos Beltrán’s strong showing on publicly tracked ballots created some amount of suspense leading up to the announcement, nobody scraped the bar; all three candidates who made the cut cleared at least 80% of the vote. The last time everybody elected made it by such a comfortable margin was in 2016, when Ken Griffey Jr. (99.3%) and Mike Piazza (83%) gained entry, with the class of ’18 just missing out because Trevor Hoffman (79.9%) lagged. Suzuki, Sabathia, and Wagner will be inducted in Cooperstown along with Classic Baseball honorees Dave Parker and the late Dick Allen on July 27, 2025.

Here’s a tidbit you might not have been aware of that ties this class together: all three honorees are natural-born right-handers who learned to do their most important job left-handed. Wagner famously broke his right arm twice at age seven and learned to throw lefty, Sabathia struggled in T-ball until switching hands, and Suzuki was taught to hit lefty by his father. Both pitchers took their cuts lefty as well, though Ichiro threw right-handed.

As usual, beyond the topline results, there’s plenty to ruminate on. So as promised, here’s my candidate-by-candidate breakdown of the entire slate of 28 candidates, 15 of whom will return to the ballot next year. Note that except where indicated, all references to percentages in Ryan Thibodaux’s indispensable Tracker are based upon data as of 9 a.m. ET on Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »

As Derek Jeter goes, so goes Ichiro Suzuki. For the second time in the history of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, a candidate with an impeccable résumé has missed unanimous selection by a single vote from among nearly 400 ballots, leaving Mariano Rivera as the only player to run the table. Nonetheless — and far more importantly — Suzuki is Cooperstown-bound. In the voting results that were announced on Tuesday evening, Suzuki received 99.7% of the vote, and was joined by two other honorees, namely first-year candidate CC Sabathia (86.8%) and 10th-year candidate Billy Wagner (82.5%), the latter after missing election by just five votes last year.

Based upon the 216 ballots published in the Ballot Tracker prior to the announcement of the results, the only questions that carried real suspense were whether Suzuki would be unanimous and whether third-year candidate Carlos Beltrán would clear 75%. Beltran received 81.5% of the vote on published ballots, but finished with 70.3%, still a healthy 13.2-point jump from last year. Eighth-year candidate Andruw Jones, whose Tracker share hovered just below 75% for most of the cycle, finished with 66.2%. No other candidate received more than 40%, with second-year candidate Chase Utley (39.8%) the closest. Beltrán and Jones are well-positioned for election with next year’s slate, which lacks any candidate likely to be honored in his first year; Cole Hamels and Ryan Braun head that class.

This is the second year in a row that the writers have tabbed three candidates, after last year’s trio of Adrian Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer, and the seventh time in the past 12 cycles that the writers have elected more than two candidates. Over the 2014–25 span, the writers have elected 30 candidates, that despite one shutout (2021) and two cycles with just a single honoree (’22 and ’23). Read the rest of this entry »

Like most of you, I’ve spent all winter with one eye on the Hall of Fame ballot tracker run by Ryan Thibodaux, Anthony Calamis, and Adam Dore.

As an aside: I love the tracker, partly because it’s in the best traditions of citizen journalism/archivism, and has been made essential within its niche by the enthusiasm and thoroughness of the people who run it. It reminds me of The Himalayan Database, which is considered the definitive list of all the climbers who have summited the highest mountains in the world. The Database was founded and run not by a sponsor or NGO, but by a single journalist, Elizabeth Hawley, who tracked, verified, and published ascents from the 1960s until her death in 2018. In this age of corporatization, conglomeration, and misinformation, it’s invigorating to see a single trusted list of Things That Happened published online somewhere by people who care about the historical record.

Anyway, last week, I noticed a fresh shipment of ballots from voters representing the Philadelphia BBWAA chapter, which included a swell of support for Jimmy Rollins’ candidacy. By Sunday, as I was looking over Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes’ ballot, I found myself experiencing an unexpected combination of emotions. Read the rest of this entry »