Ichiro HOF Poll

[D-train]

The voting is done and the votes are counted.
Ichiro Suzuki was elected to the HOF on his first try.
*

NEWSFLASH:
Ichiro was not unanimously voted in.
*
Newsweek
1.9M Followers
Ichiro Suzuki Earns Hall of Fame Selection, But Isn't Unanimous Choice
Story by Jon Paul Hoornstra

Ichiro Suzuki became a Hall of Famer in his native country on Thursday, but the 51-year-old former outfielder was not a unanimous selection.

Longtime Japanese baseball reporter Jim Allen, writing on jballallen.com, noted that Suzuki became the seventh player ever inducted to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame inducted on the first try.

However, 26 voters cast ballots without including Suzuki, giving him only 92.6 percent support in his only appearance on the Japanese ballot.

By contrast, Suzuki is also on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, for which 163 known ballots have been cast so far. Suzuki's name has been included on every ballot, according to Ryan Thibodeaux's online tracker.

As Allen explains:

No player has ever been a unanimous selection in Japan, largely because the eligibility was so badly handled for most of the hall's history. ... This is not an indictment of those 26 voters who didn't support Ichiro. Ichiro was going to go in without a struggle, and there are many deserving candidates on the ballot, and for a short time I toyed with the idea of not voting for him in order to give that vote to another deserving but under-supported player.

— Jim Allen

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/motors ... 21db&ei=13

LOL that is the Japanese HOF. I guess 26 didn't vote for him because he left in his prime.

[D-train]

By Adam Jude
Seattle Times staff reporter
When voting results for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2025 class are announced Tuesday, Mariners icon Ichiro Suzuki will become the first Asian player to earn election into the sport’s most prestigious club.

Of that, there is no doubt.

The only real question looming is whether Ichiro becomes the first position player in Major League Baseball history to receive a unanimous selection.

A singular star with a signature style, Ichiro had a career defined by firsts. He was the first Japanese position player to play in MLB, and he ranks first on baseball’s all-time hits list when combining his totals from Japan and the majors.

And on most afternoons during the baseball season, he is still the first person in uniform to take the field before a Mariners game.

It’s been nearly six years since Ichiro retired, and yet right field remains the 51-year-old’s daily domain throughout the season at T-Mobile Park.

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On most summer afternoons he will step onto the pristine outfield grass and go through his familiar workout routine — stretching, throwing and shagging fly balls and, after all that, several rounds of hitting in an indoor batting cage — that remains as meticulous as it was during his 19-year major league career.

“Even though I retired as an active player, baseball and Seattle have never left my heart,” Ichiro said during his induction into the Mariners’ team Hall of Fame on Aug. 27, 2022. “Baseball will forever be my soul.”

This year the opposite will formally come true, too. Ichiro will forever be embedded into the soul of the sport when he is enshrined this summer into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., a ceremony that is sure to capture widespread fanfare here and in Japan.

The 2025 class will be announced Tuesday when the results of voting from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America are unveiled at 3 p.m. PST on MLB Network.

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Another Mariners icon, Ken Griffey Jr., fell three votes shy of unanimity in 2016, and the New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter came up one vote short in 2020.

Mariano Rivera, the Yankees’ legendary relief pitcher inducted in 2019, is the only player to earn a unanimous selection.

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The BBWAA, which has overseen Hall of Fame voting since 1936, sent ballots to 400 writers for the 2025 class. To be eligible to vote, members must be active baseball writers for 10 years. (Two Seattle Times sports writers, Ryan Divish and Tim Booth, are Hall of Fame voters.)

In the first 165 ballots revealed publicly over the past month, Ichiro was named on all 165. Longtime Mariners ace Felix Hernandez, who like Ichiro is eligible for the Hall of Fame for the first time, has had an encouraging debut on the ballot, receiving roughly 25% of the publicly revealed votes.

To earn election a player must receive 75% of BBWAA votes. (To remain on the ballot next year a player must receive 5% of the votes, and the debate about Hernandez's candidacy, it appears, should carry over into 2026.)

BBWAA members are not required to make their ballots public.

“While I don’t see how any writer in their right mind could object to [Ichiro’s] election … recent history shows the cloak of anonymity can do strange things,” Jay Jaffe, author of The Cooperstown Casebook, wrote recently for the baseball site FanGraphs. “None of the writers who omitted Griffey or Jeter have ever been identified, but within a body of roughly 400 voters there will always be a few petty and selfish ones who make the process about themselves.”

Unanimous or not, Ichiro cemented his place among the game’s all-time best with his transcendent style on the field.

After beginning his pro career in Japan with the Orix Blue Wave — during which he won seven batting titles, three MVPs and a Japan Series championship — Ichiro in 2001 became the first Japanese position player to make the jump to MLB in 2001, at age 27.

The Mariners, initially, were not quite sure what they had in Ichiro, and the rest of the major leagues wasn’t prepared for what was about to hit the sport.

“Everyone wondered at the beginning how he would adjust to the major league game, but that was the wrong question, it turned out,” venerable baseball columnist Larry Stone wrote for The Times after Ichiro’s retirement in 2019. “The MLB game had to adjust to Ichiro, who in those early days, when his skills were still at their peak, confounded opponents in every way.”

Ichiro, who has remained part of the Mariners organization as a special assistant to the chairman, won the American League MVP and Rookie of the Year awards in 2001, leading the majors in batting average (.350), hits (242) and stolen bases (56), and helping the Mariners surge to a league-record 116 wins.

From 2001 to 2010 Ichiro made 10 consecutive All-Star teams, won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves and was a fixture batting leadoff and playing right field for the Mariners. No one did either better than Ichiro, and no one did it with greater devotion to his craft.

A magician with a bat in his hand, he finished his MLB career with 3,089 hits, and when paired with his hit total in Japan (1,278), his 4,367 hits as a professional are more than any player in baseball history.

In 2004 he broke the all-time season hits record (with 262) that seems likely never to be broken.

He’s one of the greatest defensive right fielders in MLB history, one of the greatest base runners in MLB history, and his greatness will be formally recognized soon enough in Cooperstown.

[D-train]

This is bullshit. There are plenty of reasons to not vote him first ballot. But Jaffee feels the need to denigrate any writers that disagree with him.

“While I don’t see how any writer in their right mind could object to [Ichiro’s] election … recent history shows the cloak of anonymity can do strange things,” Jay Jaffe, author of The Cooperstown Casebook, wrote recently for the baseball site FanGraphs. “None of the writers who omitted Griffey or Jeter have ever been identified, but within a body of roughly 400 voters there will always be a few petty and selfish ones who make the process about themselves.”

[Donn Beach]

So ichiro didn't get the highest vote total ever for the Japanese hall of Fame. Want to know who holds that record, a Russian, Victor Starffin. This guy's story is beyond belief

It is highly probable that no professional baseball player — from any era, country or league — ever lived a more erratic, dramatic, and in the end tragic life than did the pitcher today known to the game’s history connoisseurs as Victor Starffin. He is the sport’s only hall-of-fame legend born in the unlikely baseball breeding grounds of the Russian Urals; he wove his diamond legacy in the unlikely setting of pre-World War II Japan; his family history would in the end contain enough political and criminal intrigue to spice the pages of a classic novel penned by Dostoevsky or Tolstoy; his own personal character flaws and his adopted country’s remarkable xenophobia conspired to produce one of the most rapid and dramatic tumbles from grace suffered by any renowned star athlete. Author Richard Puff was hardly guilty of exaggeration when he suggested that the Russian-born immigrant turned Japanese pitching hero lived a life fit for a Hollywood script and also amassed mound statistics appropriate for enshrinement in Cooperstown.

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/victor-starffin/

[D-train]

By Ryan Divish
Seattle Times staff reporter
As I looked at my Baseball Hall of Fame ballot that included checkmarks on the boxes next to nine players’ names, I stared at the open box next to another name: Félix Hernández.

Memories of a brilliant career that somehow seems unfulfilled began to play in my mind. In 18 years covering baseball, I’ve written more words about Hernández than any other player. Most were laudatory in the beginning, and too many had to be critical at the end. I likened his career to a Shakespearean tragedy. I honestly could have written many more. He is the most fascinating baseball player I’ve covered.

I thought about the first time I watched Félix Hernández pitch in person, on Aug. 8, 2006 at then-Safeco Field. It was an outing and outcome that proved to be prescient of starts and seasons ahead.

I had just moved to the Pacific Northwest after being hired as a general assignment sports reporter for The News Tribune in Tacoma. I was there to shadow the late Larry Larue and observe the protocol for covering a Mariners game.

Having read about the pitching prodigy dubbed “King Félix,” I was eager to see if the hype was real. His first full season at the MLB level, following an audacious debut the year prior, had been somewhat of a disappointment. He’d arrived to spring training overweight — or as he later called himself, “Fat Félix” — and struggled to pitch with consistency. For every solid start there would be at least two that were subpar.

But facing a bad Tampa Bay team, Hernández delivered a dominant performance. He pitched eight innings, allowing a run on five hits with a walk, and he struck out five on 111 pitches with 68 strikes … and took a no-decision. He screamed after strikeouts, he pounded his glove after double plays and basked in the deserved applause. He was competitive, charismatic and talented.


Unfortunately, the Mariners lineup was stymied by a pitcher named Jae Weong Seo, scoring only one run on a Kenji Johjima RBI single over the starter’s seven innings. So when Hernández finished his eight innings, he walked off the mound to a standing ovation and the score tied. The Mariners eventually won in the 10th inning on a Richie Sexson walkoff grand slam.

It was the 11th time in his young career that Hernández had delivered a quality start — six or more innings pitched with three runs or fewer allowed — and taken either a no-decision or loss. He didn’t mention taking the no-decision or the lack of run support postgame. He was just happy the team won.

It was frustrating theme that would prevail far too often in his starts over the next 10 seasons. Hernández would produce a strong outing, the Mariners wouldn’t do enough offensively to help him get the win, or they wouldn’t even win the game.

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From his MLB debut on Aug. 4, 2005 through the 2016 season, his pitching prime, Hernández produced 240 quality starts. He posted a 132-36 record with 72 no-decisions. Yes, 72 times, Hernández didn’t figure into the decision. How about two earned runs or fewer allowed in six-plus innings? A 121-21 record with 65 no-decisions. And seven-plus innings with two runs or fewer? A 108-16 record with 49 no-decisions.

If you recall, the Mariners mustered all of one run in Hernández’s perfect game in 2012.

In subsequent years, when a Mariners starting pitcher delivered a quality start or better while receiving minimal or no run support — people would say he got “Félix’d.”

So many game stories were detailed with how the Mariners squandered those wasted Hernández outings. Even then, I understood I was covering pitching greatness, regardless of the decision. I believed I was watching a pitcher building a résumé that would carry him to Cooperstown, N.Y., the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Voting for the 2025 class will be announced Tuesday, and this is Hernández’s first year on the ballot along with former teammate Ichiro.

Hernández’s path to baseball’s greatest individual honor was sidetracked over the final three years of his career. The effects of a massive workload in his early years, the inability to adjust to his diminishing stuff and the refusal to recognize that Father Time was tougher to defeat than any hitter were the larger culprits. The realization that he needed to change came too late.

But what if Hernández’s teams during that 10-year span of his best seasons were a little less flawed and a little bit better? What if the Mariners had invested more into making those teams into contenders or something more than hopefully competitive? The thought of Hernández starting a playoff game in his prime leaves a melancholy feeling.

What if he would’ve picked up wins in just over half of those 65 games that he pitched seven-plus innings and allowed two runs or fewer instead of taking a no-decision or a loss?

Though the value or importance of a pitcher’s win has slowly diminished as people’s understanding of baseball stats evolved over the years, it is still a counting stat that has long mattered when it comes to Hall of Fame voting.

Remember the discontent from many baseball fans and writers when Hernández won the 2010 AL Cy Young Award with a 13-12 record?

Adding 33 wins and subtracting 10 losses to his career record of 169-136 makes his Hall of Fame resume more attractive to many voters.

While he must shoulder the blame for the lackluster performances in the final three seasons of his career — a 15-27 record and 5.42 ERA, Hernández couldn’t control the talent or lack thereof around him in the 10 years prior.

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From his debut date through the 2016 season, the top three pitchers:

Justin Verlander: 350 starts, 2,327 2/3 innings, 173-104 record, 3.45 ERA, 2,190 strikeouts, 54.7 fWAR

Félix Hernández: 358 starts, 2,410 2/3 innings, 154-108 record, 3.16 ERA, 2,260 strikeouts, 53.5 fWAR

CC Sabathia: 336 starts, 2,272 innings, 163-97 record, 3.48 ERA, 2,039 strikeouts, 48.3 fWAR

Sabathia (this year) and Verlander (if he ever retires) are expected to gain Hall of Fame induction aided by their longevity — both starting more than 500 games — and ability to be effective in their mid- to late 30s.

Many voters rely on the qualification that a player must be the most dominant at their position for a decade. Hernández was that pitcher. He arguably should’ve had a second AL Cy Young Award as well.

From 2009 through 2014 he had the lowest ERA, the most strikeouts and fWAR of any starting pitcher in the American League.

In his final start at T-Mobile Park, an emotional farewell between a transcendent performer and the fan base that adored him, venerable Seattle Times columnist Larry Stone (who will one day find his way to Cooperstown enshrinement), lamented that Hernández’s chance at the Hall of Fame was gone. The longevity needed to bolster the counting stats relied upon by many voters wasn’t going to happen.

I’ve rarely disagreed with Larry, a man who covered Babe Ruth’s retirement, when it came to such historical perspectives. I have my doubts that Hernández will garner induction. And I understand why people wouldn’t vote for him. But I checked that box next to his name on my ballot out of respect for what I watched and what SHOULD’VE been for him.

The larger reason was to help him garner the 5% of the vote needed to keep his name on the ballot for next year and hopefully years beyond. Maybe as the Hall of Fame voting base grows younger, his numbers may grow. Perhaps, he can gain induction by the “eras” committee when his eligibility ends.

I voted for Félix Hernández for the Hall of Fame and will continue to do as long as he’s on the ballot.

[rockycola]

The voting is done and the votes are counted.
Ichiro Suzuki was elected to the HOF on his first try.
*

NEWSFLASH:
Ichiro was not unanimously voted in.
*
Newsweek
1.9M Followers
Ichiro Suzuki Earns Hall of Fame Selection, But Isn't Unanimous Choice
Story by Jon Paul Hoornstra

Ichiro Suzuki became a Hall of Famer in his native country on Thursday, but the 51-year-old former outfielder was not a unanimous selection.

Longtime Japanese baseball reporter Jim Allen, writing on jballallen.com, noted that Suzuki became the seventh player ever inducted to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame inducted on the first try.

However, 26 voters cast ballots without including Suzuki, giving him only 92.6 percent support in his only appearance on the Japanese ballot.

By contrast, Suzuki is also on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, for which 163 known ballots have been cast so far. Suzuki's name has been included on every ballot, according to Ryan Thibodeaux's online tracker.

As Allen explains:

No player has ever been a unanimous selection in Japan, largely because the eligibility was so badly handled for most of the hall's history. ... This is not an indictment of those 26 voters who didn't support Ichiro. Ichiro was going to go in without a struggle, and there are many deserving candidates on the ballot, and for a short time I toyed with the idea of not voting for him in order to give that vote to another deserving but under-supported player.

— Jim Allen

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/motors ... 21db&ei=13

What??? The balloting has never been leaked before. I would take that with a giant grain O salt.

~ Gotcha!

[Donn Beach]

That was the Japanese hall of Fame

[D-train]

Well me and four other were correct. Can't believe it was only one vote. Him and Jeter.

[Donn Beach]

Jeter, junior and ichiro, interesting trio, probably appropriate

[D-train]

Jeter, junior and ichiro, interesting trio, probably appropriate

Jr. had three no votes.