The results of voting for the 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame class will be revealed Tuesday evening. We already know that Dave Parker and Dick Allen were inducted via the Era Committee last month, so this reveal is the BBWAA portion. Who will join Parker and Allen?
Well, Ichiro Suzuki will. Thus far, we haven’t seen a single voter reveal a ballot without including Ichiro. Yes, he’s tracking at 100%. Let’s dive in further to the ballot tracker, which is excellently compiled by Ryan Thibodaux and his team each year and use past experience to predict how this thing will finish.
As I’ve said previously, my expectation is that Ichiro will not be unanimous but will come damn close. He’ll be over 99% and, hey, maybe he will join Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous inductees.
There’s much more intrigue for me with the rest of the ballot. Who else could be named on the 75% of writers’ ballots to gain enshrinement?
As of Monday morning, CC Sabathia has been named on 93.2% of the public ballots. Generally speaking, ballots kept private tend to skew “old school” voters and those types of voters are, in general, much stingier with their ballots. That means we can safely assume Sabathia’s vote percentage will actually be lower — and perhaps significantly so. I do not, however, think he’s going to lose more than 18%, meaning I am predicting CC joins Ichiro, Allen and Parker.
Billy Wagner is in his 10th and final vote. He got 73.8% of the vote last year and his final number was only 4.5% lower than he was tracking on public ballots. That should bode well for him right now, given that he’s currently tracking at 84.7%. Many candidates who come close to induction see a final year bump and all Wagner needed from last year was to add five votes. Even without a final year bump, new voters alone could send Wagner in (we have two new voters here at CBS Sports and we both voted for Wagner).
My belief is the class ends here. It’ll be Allen, Parker, Suzuki, Sabathia and Wagner, making for a nice ceremony with four living Hall of Famers and one posthumous induction in Allen.
As for the rest of the ballot, let’s take a quick look:
- Carlos Beltrán is actually tracking at 80.7%, which would be enough to gain enshrinement. He lost 9.3% from public ballots to the actual results last season, so if it’s a similar fall, he’s set to top 70%. Given how light the ballot is set to look next season, he’s very, very likely a 2026 Hall of Fame inductee.
- Andruw Jones might well join him, though it’s possible he has to wait until 2027. Jones is tracking at 72.2% and and last year took an 8% hit between the public ballots and actual voting, which means he might be in the 64% range. That might only be around a 3% gain from last season’s 61.6%. I’m not sure it’s enough momentum to say he’s making it next year, but for the 2027 vote, it’ll be his 10th and final year on the ballot. I think he’ll make it then.
- Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez appear to continue to lack momentum. They both failed to get to 35% of the vote last year and A-Rod is tracking at 41.5%. Manny sits at 37.5%. Neither has added public votes compared to past years. This is the ninth year on the ballot for Ramirez while it’s the fourth for A-Rod. It’s merely a formality for Ramirez and it’s starting to look that way for A-Rod.
- Chase Utley has added a decent number of votes. After getting 28.8% of the vote last year, his first on the ballot, he’s tracking at 52.8%. It seems safe that he’ll top 40% and maybe even get to 45%. This bodes well for his chances moving forward.
- Along with Beltrán’s 20, the player adding the most votes this time around so far is Andy Pettitte, with 20 new votes of his own. He only got 13.5% of the vote last year, but he’s tracking at 33.5% right now. It’s his seventh year on the ballot, so it’s likely too little, too late, but he’s definitely worth a mention.
- The following players are either definitely safe or are likely to be safe to remain on the ballot, as 5% of the vote is needed: Bobby Abreu (25.0%), Félix Hernández (24.4%), Dustin Pedroia (14.2%), Mark Buehrle (12.5%), Omar Vizquel (12.5%), David Wright (11.9%) and Francisco Rodríguez (8.0%).
- The following players have gotten votes but appear to be shy of 5%: Russell Martin (4%), Brian McCann (3.4%), Ian Kinsler (2.3%) and Torii Hunter (1.7%). Hunter is the only returnee of the bunch and it’s his fifth year. He did gain 2.7% last year from public ballots to the actual results, so it’s possible he squeaks by again, though he’d need more of a bump, obviously.
- The following players haven’t been named on a single public ballot to this point: Carlos González, Curtis Granderson, Adam Jones, Hanley Ramírez, Fernando Rodney, Troy Tulowitzki and Ben Zobrist. They are all first-timers, meaning one-and-dones.
Again, the final prediction is Sabathia, Suzuki and Wagner get in while Beltrán makes it next year and Jones gets in for 2027. If anyone else gets hot enough to join Jones in 2027, I’ll say it’s Utley.
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