FILE – Seattle Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki follows through after hitting his 3,000th career hit in the … [+] first inning of a baseball game against the Texas Rangers, Tuesday, July 29, 2008, in Arlington, Texas.(AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

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It’s that time of year again – the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the results of this year’s voting last evening, and Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner exceeded tbe necessary 75% threshold for induction.

Suzuki appeared on all but one of the 394 ballots submitted, failing to join Mariano Rivera as the only player unanimously elected. Sabathia (86.8%) and Wagner (82.5%) both got in fairly easily, the former in his first year of eligibility, the latter in his 10th and last.

This year’s crop of inductees is unusually personal for me. I was part of the front office that traded for Sabathia in Milwaukee. The incredible work he did for the Brewers down the stretch in 2008 had to be seen to be believed. In fact, we may never see anything like that again, you know, the whole seven complete games in 17 starts and averaging over eight innings per outing thing. Simply remarkable.

And after that season, CC left Milwaukee for the Yankees and I left Milwaukee for Seattle, where Ichiro was spinning his magic. He was a truly unique artist, and still pretty near the height of his powers when I first arrived. The skill, the discipline, the aura…….it was a privilege to bear witness to it each and every day. And oh, the batting practice. Ichiro’s raw power was not a myth – it was on display on a regular basis.

This article isn’t about the individual players, however. It’s about the process, an annual update of where the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) stands with regard to its mission to elect the game’s best players to its shrine in Cooperstown.

The writers had quite a boondoggle – the game’s steroid era – to deal with for an extended period of time. It’s still not quite over. Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez still reside on the ballot, though there is nothing resembling a groundswell of support for either player at this point.

My stance is that while the writers didn’t ask for this problem, they didn’t exactly do a great job with it, either. Here we stand in 2025 with some of the very greatest players ever to wear a uniform excluded from the Hall. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rodriguez, Ramirez and more.

My personal stance is that if you were clearly good enough to be in the Hall without “help”, then you should be in. That makes Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez and Ramirez easy calls. It makes Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire no votes, and it anoints Rafael Palmeiro as the line of demarcation where both sides can fight it out.

But that’s just me. There’s room for reasonable people to differ on this, and the 75% requirement makes it very difficult to lose large blocs of voters and still make the Hall.

But the big problem wasn’t those guys – it was the clogging of the ballot for over a decade that kept other players out of the Hall and dropped some off of it prematurely. Kenny Lofton and Jim Edmonds, to name two, at least deserved a hearing but didn’t make the 5% minimum requirement because of the glut of candidates. Players like Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker and now Wagner weathered the storm early in their candidacy and snuck over the line at the end.

So now, we’re at a point where Rodriguez and Ramirez are the only two polarizing players left, and the new crops of annual candidates haven’t been all that inspiring. This is leaving voters with plenty of what I like to call “ballot capacity”.

in 2018, voters used an average of 8.46 of their 10 available spots on the ballot, and elected Chipper Jones, Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman, while eventual electees Walker, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina and Scott Rolen all lurked behind them. Martinez and Mussina got in the next year, along with ballot newcomers Rivera and Roy Halladay, but voters only listed an average of 8.01 players on their ballots.

That figure drifted down to 6.61 and 5.90 in 2020 and 2021, respectively, but the writers elected only Rivera and Derek Jeter the first year and NO ONE the second. That was when they had their chance to right their wrongs of the steroid era, like Bonds, Clemens, Curt Schilling and others, but elected not to do so.

The average number of votes bounced up to 7.11 in 2022 when David Ortiz was elected on the first ballot (voters overlooked steroid concerns here), and bottomed out at 5.86 in 2023 when Rolen finally got in. In 2024 (7.00) and 2025 (6.77), three players, including two new ballot newcomers were elected each year. The writers have a very manageable ballot now, and to their credit, they’re at least managing it.

A couple of trends bear watching…….

STARTING PITCHER WATCH

The election of Sabathia on the first try is very encouraging, in my opinion. The days of the Steve Carlton/Tom Seaver 300+ win behemoth is basically over, but that doesn’t mean the starting pitcher should be excluded from Cooperstown moving forward. Sabathia’s body of work is solidly Hall of Fame-worthy. First ballot worthy? That’s not a game I like to play. If you belong in the Hall, you belong, and CC belongs. With all of the extra ballot capacity now in play, perhaps fresh looks will be given to Andy Pettitte (27.9% in 2025) and Mark Buehrle (11.5%), whose career numbers are not all that dissimilar to Sabathia’s.

IF YOU STAY ON THE BALLOT, YOU’VE GOT A SHOT

Back to ballot capacity……there were were 6.77 votes per ballot this year. 2.69 went to Ichiro, CC and Wagner. Another 0.10 went to players who fell off of the ballot. If writers include everyone they voted for in 2025 in 2026 – and no one else – that would only represent 3.98 votes per ballot. So they have 6.02 votes of excess ballot capacity. And Cole Hamels and perhaps Ryan Braun will be the only two newcomers worthy of serious consideration next year.

This a golden opportunity for ballot holdovers to make serious upward moves. Carlos Beltran? Slam-dunk next year. Andruw Jones? Solidly better than 50-50 chance. Look for Chase Utley to make a major upward in 2026, greasing the skids for future induction. And watch those pitchers – the Pettitte/Buehrle/Hamels group and even Felix Hernandez – move onto the radar.

Looking back over the last decade-plus, there have been a significant number of players who started off very slow in the Hall voting, but eventually got in. The Edgars, Walkers, Wagners, Rolens……..the ballot clears out over the years, and the writers anoint new favorites. Some of my final takeaways from this year’s ballot – Utley is going to get in, and I wouldn’t totally write off Felix, though I do think he’s still less than a 50-50 bet.

There’s room for reasonable differences of opinion between big and small Hall folks. Personally, I think there is no reasonable argument to keep inner circle greats, like Bonds and Clemens, out of the Hall. But that war has been waged and decided, to again to be fought in the various veterans’ committees down the road. But the pendulum is swinging back toward a time when excellent, likable players are going to regularly be elected to the Hall by the writers, and that’s a good thing.