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 Greatness. He won a Cy Young Award and was top 5 in four other seasons. He won a championship with the 2009 Yankees. He was on six all-star teams.
But for my money, the most overwhelming characteristic about Sabathia (in fantasy and reality) was his reliability. He made it to 200 innings or more in eight seasons, with a high of 253. He had 13 seasons with 30 or more starts, and 18 seasons with at least 27 turns. In 2008, probably his best season, he had 10 complete games and five shutouts. If anyone did that in 2025, we’d all start hugging strangers.
And of course Sabathia won 251 games, the type of milestone that will soon die out in modern baseball.
I know baseball is supposed to be smarter these days — don’t go too long with the starter, work the matchups, rely on the bullpen parade. I’m unapologetically nostalgic for a time when your ace took the ball and said “It’s on me today, boys.” Sabathia was that kind of pitcher. When you drafted him for your fantasy roster for the majority of his career, you had a set-and-forget foundation ready to go, and at his peak he was a four-category difference-maker.
— Scott Pianowski
Billy Wagner
From a fantasy perspective, Billy Wagner is the perfect example of how slow and steady wins the race. Admittedly, it feels strange to use the word “slow” to describe someone who mowed down batters at an elite rate, but the left-hander worked his way to 422 career saves without ever leading the league in that coveted fantasy statistic.
Instead, he was a metronome of reliability for those who drafted him among the elite closers, posting nine 30-save seasons in a 13-year stretch from 1998 to his final year in 2010. His ratios were similarly stellar, as an injury-impacted 2000 season was his only year with an ERA above 3.00 or a WHIP over 1.20.
When fantasy managers select a high-priced closer, they mostly want to know what they’re paying for, and Wagner was the perfect end to that goal. Relievers have reached the 45-save plateau 52 times in this century, and Wagner isn’t anywhere on that list (his high was 44 in 2003). But many of the men who posted an eye-popping total quickly flamed out, while Wagner met expectations in nearly every campaign. Those who are preparing for 2025 drafts would be wise to remember the lesson of Billy Wagner and prioritize reliability when choosing their saves anchor. — Fred Zinkie
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