CC Sabathia officially became the latest longtime Yankee to reach the Baseball Hall of Fame when the voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America was announced Tuesday night, sending Sabathia to Cooperstown along with Ichiro Suzuki and former Mets reliever Billy Wagner.
The Baseball Hall of Fame has announced the results of this year’s voting, with Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner exceeding the necessary 75% threshold for induction into the Class of 2025.
CC Sabathia was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 86.8% of votes, marking his significant career with 251 wins, a 3.74 ERA, and 3,093 strikeouts. He'll enter the Hall with a Yankees cap.
Other bits of intrigue ahead of Tuesday's 6 p.m. announcement: Will CC Sabathia be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and is this the year Billy Wagner gets in?
Suzuki came in first in terms of voting with 393, making history as the first Japanese-born player elected to the Hall of Fame. He was close to making history again as he was nearly unanimous– and he would have been in some pretty weighty company to share with Yankee legends Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter.
The New York Yankees are the winningest team in Major League Baseball history, and they have had countless household names play for them over the years. From Hall of Famers to current superstars, the Yankees have it all when it comes to talented players over the years.
In Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner, the Baseball Writers Association delivered quite an eclectic trifecta to Cooperstown on Tuesday. The first Japanese player ever elected to the Hall of Fame,
Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese player chosen for baseball’s Hall of Fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous when he was elected Tuesday along with CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner.
An online site that tracks Baseball Hall of Fame voting doesn’t expect the lone voter who did not check Ichiro Suzuki on his ballot to ever come forward.
Derek Jeter sounds fed up with a lack of Hall of Fame voter accountability, and the Yankees legend wants writers with ballots to be held accountable.
In electing Wagner, the BBWAA has defined the modern-day closer as its own entity, with candidates’ credentials measured not against the whole of the body but against this specific peer group.