Ichiro Suzuki is a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
That has long been the assumption among baseball fans regarding the Japanese outfielder who played the majority of his 19-year MLB career with the Seattle Mariners, along with stints with the New York Yankees and Miami Marlins.
On Tuesday, that assumption is set to become reality, with baseball’s Hall of Fame class of 2025 being announced at 3 p.m. Players who received votes from 75% or more of those surveyed from the Baseball Writers’ Assn. of America will be inducted at Cooperstown on July 27.
CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner and Carlos Beltrán are among the other former players who could get the nod this year.
A 10-time All Star, Suzuki is considered a strong possibility to join former Yankees reliever and the MLB’s all-time saves leader Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous Hall of Fame picks.
Suzuki spent nine seasons with Orix in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball before joining MLB and the Mariners in 2001. While Japanese pitcher Hideo Nomo was a star for the Dodgers in the 1990s, Suzuki was the first Japanese position player to enjoy that level of success in the majors.
In his debut season, Susuki claimed American League MVP and Rookie of the Year honors, becoming only the second player to win those awards in any league in the same season. He also won the AL batting title that year, as well as in 2004. By the time he wrapped up his playing career, Suzuki had amassed 4,367 hits as a professional, including 3,089 in MLB.
Last week, Susuki became the seventh first-ballot inductee into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in Tokyo.
While Suzuki also will be the first Japanese player to be immortalized at Cooperstown, he almost certainly won’t be the last. It seems inevitable that Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani will be enshrined there one day as well.
Ohtani recently won his third MVP award in just seven MLB seasons. At age 30, the former Angels two-way player also made the playoffs for the first time and became a World Series champion after signing a 10-year, $700-million contract with the Dodgers before the 2024 season.
Last season, Ohtani replaced Suzuki in the MLB record books as the Japanese-born player with the most stolen bases in a season (59 for Ohtani, 56 for Suzuki in 2001). Ohtani also finished with 54 home runs in 2024, marking the first time a player has hit 50 homers and stolen 50 bases in the same season.
“He is somebody I admire and look up to,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton after matching Ichiro’s mark in September.
Angels’ Shohei Ohtani, left, bows to Seattle Mariners special assistant Ichiro Suzuki on April 3, 2023, in Seattle.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
Suzuki and Ohtani never got to share the diamond as MLB players, with Suzuki switching to a front office role with the Mariners role the day before an early-season series against the Angels during Ohtani’s rookie year in 2018.
“You can’t even compare me to him because he’s actually doing something that is going to impact not just Japan or here but the whole world,” Suzuki said of Ohtani before that May 2018 series.
Suzuki also might be joined one day in the Hall of Fame by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who was born in Naha, Okinawa, Japan, and has led L.A. to two World Series championships and eight National League West titles in his nine years as the team’s skipper.
In addition to Ohtani, the Dodgers feature two other Japanese players on their roster in pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the newly signed Roki Sasaki. In 2023, Orix’s Yamamoto joined Suzuki as two of only three players to earn three Nippon Professional Baseball MVP awards.
“He is a legend of the franchise. I’m happy to have done the same as him,” Yamamoto said of Suzuki at the time. “Everyone looks up to him, and I’m one of those.”
In a 2022 interview, Sasaki named Suzuki as the baseball player he admires most.
“I like the way he thinks, and the numbers he put up over the course of his career are so impressive,” Sasaki said. “So I’m a big fan of his. And I also admire just how long of a career he’s had.”