The Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2025 has been decided. Outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, pitcher CC Sabathia and reliever Billy Wagner have all been elected. Let’s take a trip down memory lane to remember the type of impact this trio made in fantasy baseball over the course of their careers.
Ichiro Suzuki
Ichiro entered Major League Baseball as its best, most charming and most interesting player, which basically never happens.
He was immediately a 7.7-WAR player, the batting champ, a .350 hitter, Rookie of the Year and MVP, Gold Glove winner and stolen base leader. He led the American League in hits seven times in his career, including five straight from 2006-10. Ichiro set the single-season hits record with an outrageous 262 back in 2004 and he reached 3,089 for his career, despite spending seven of his prime years in Japan. His best single-season average in MLB was .372, also coming in 2004, a mark that no player has matched since.
Ichiro was an obvious Hall of Famer from the start, a completely unique talent in an era in which everyone else was focused on launching bombs. Had he entered the majors at 20 instead of 27, he might have finished his career with 4,500 hits. He was just an absurd player, among the two or three greatest bat-to-ball hitters of the past half-century.
He was of course a cheat code of a player in fantasy because he was a batting average outlier for a decade who also routinely led the league in at-bats — generally in the 680 to 700 range. Ichiro was not particularly interested in drawing walks, which meant your fantasy roster’s best hitter was gonna see 80 to 100 more ABs than any other player on the squad. He scored over 100 runs eight times and was a consistent stolen base factor, swiping 26 or more bags 11 times, including reaching 40 or more in five seasons.
Absolutely unfair at his peak, a genius-level batter. An icon. An unrivaled motivator. Subject of both the GOAT fantasy team name and the greatest rec-league softball team name (Honey Nut Ichiros). A personality so delightful that he was responsible for the very best Tom Brady story. A legend among legends. — Andy Behrens
CC Sabathia
I hope you appreciated CC Sabathia while he was still playing, because they aren’t making pitchers like this these days.
Sabathia’s career had plenty of Capital-G…