Baseball Hall of Fame predictions: Who will join Ichiro in the 2025 class when the votes are revealed?

Voting results for the Baseball Hall of Fame class of 2025 will be revealed Tuesday evening. We already know that Dave Parker and Dick Allen were inducted via the Era Committee last monthso this reveal is the BBWAA part. Who will join Parker and Allen?

Well, Ichiro Suzuki will. So far, we haven’t seen a single voter reveal their ballot without including Ichiro. Yes, he follows 100%. Let’s take a closer look at the vote tracking system, which is perfectly compiled every year by Ryan Thibodaux and his team and use past experience to predict how this thing will turn out.

As I said before, I expect Ichiro not to be unanimous but close to it. He’ll be over 99% and, hey, maybe he’ll join Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous inductee.

There’s a lot more intrigue for me with the rest of the ballot. Who else could be named on the 75% of writers’ ballots to obtain recognition?

As of Monday morning, CC Sabathia was nominated on 93.2% of public votes. Generally speaking, ballots kept private tend to skew toward “old school” voters and these types of voters are, in general, much more stingy with their ballots. This means we can safely assume that Sabathia’s vote percentage will actually be lower – and perhaps significantly so. However, I don’t think he’ll lose more than 18%, which means I predict CC will join Ichiro, Allen, and Parker.

Billy Wagner is on his 10th and final vote. He received 73.8% of the vote last year and his final figure was only 4.5% lower than what he received on public ballots. This should bode well for him right now, considering he currently sits at 84.7%. Many candidates close to induction see an increase in their senior year and all Wagner needed from last year was to add five votes. Even without a surge from last year, new voters alone could send Wagner (we have two new voters here at CBS Sports and we both voted for Wagner).

I believe the course ends here. It will be Allen, Parker, Suzuki, Sabathia and Wagnermaking it a beautiful ceremony with four living Hall of Famers and a posthumous induction in Allen.

For the rest of the ballot, let’s take a quick look:

• Carlos Beltrán currently has a score of 80.7%, which would be enough to obtain recognition. He lost 9.3% of public votes compared to last season’s actual results, so if the drop is similar, he should exceed 70%. Given how light the voting is next season, he is very, very likely a 2026 Hall of Fame inductee.
• Andruw Jones may well join him, although he may have to wait until 2027. Jones stands at 72.2% and last year he recorded an 8% score between public polls and the actual vote, which means it could be in the 64% range. That might only be a gain of about 3% from last season’s 61.6%. I’m not sure there’s enough momentum to say he’ll pass next year, but for the 2027 vote, it will be his 10th and final year on the ballot. I think he’ll get there then.
• Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez seem to continue to lack momentum. They failed to get 35% of the vote last year and A-Rod is at 41.5%. Manny sits at 37.5%. Neither added any public votes compared to previous years. This is the ninth year on the ballot for Ramirez and the fourth for A-Rod. It’s just a formality for Ramirez and it’s starting to look like it for A-Rod.
• Chase Utley added a decent number of votes. After receiving 28.8% of the vote last year, his first on the ballot, he came in at 52.8%. It seems prudent that it exceeds 40% and perhaps even reaches 45%. This bodes well for his chances of moving forward.
• With Beltrán’s 20, the player who has added the most votes this time so far is Andy Pettitte, with 20 new votes of his own. He only got 13.5% of the vote last year, but he currently sits at 33.5%. This is his seventh year on the ballot, so it’s probably too little, too late, but he’s certainly worth mentioning.
• The following players are either definitely safe or probably safe to remain on the ballot, as 5% of votes are 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 received votes but appear to be less than 5%: Russell Martin (4%), Brian McCann (3.4%), Ian Kinsler (2.3%), and Torii Hunter (1.7%). Hunter is the only returnee in the group and this is his fifth year. He gained 2.7% last year between public votes and actual results, so it’s possible he could do well again, although he would obviously need a bigger boost.
• The following players have so far not been named in a single public ballot: Carlos González, Curtis Granderson, Adam Jones, Hanley Ramírez, Fernando Rodney, Troy Tulowitzki and Ben Zobrist. They are all novices, that is to say, single.

Again, the final prediction is that Sabathia, Suzuki and Wagner will come in while Beltrán comes in next year and Jones comes in for 2027. If anyone else is hot enough to join Jones in 2027, I’ll say it’s is Utley.