JAWS and the 2025 Hall of Fame Ballot: Ichiro Suzuki

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

In a home run-saturated era, Ichiro Suzuki stood out. Before coming stateside, the slightly-built superstar earned the moniker the “Human Batting Machine” from Japanese media, and he hardly missed a beat upon arriving in Seattle in 2001, slapping singles and doubles to all fields in such prolific fashion that he began his major league career by reeling off a record 10 straight 200-hit seasons. Along the way, he set a single-season record with 262 hits in 2004, and despite not debuting until age 27, he surpassed the 3,000-hit milestone. Between Nippon Professional Baseball and Major League Baseball, he totaled 4,367 hits, making him the International Hit King — a comparison that rankled some, including the Hit King himself, Pete Rose.

Despite his small stature (listed at 5-foot-11, 175 pounds), Suzuki was larger than life, an athlete on a first-name basis with two continents full of fans. Wearing “Ichiro” on the back of his jersey — his manager’s idea of a promotional gimmick — he built his legend in Japan by winning seven straight batting titles (1994–2000) and three straight MVP awards for the Orix Blue Wave, whom he led to a Japan Series championship in 1996. When he joined the Mariners, he faced widespread skepticism about whether his style of play would translate, because while NPB star Hideo Nomo had enjoyed considerable success with the Dodgers upon arriving in 1995, no Japanese position player had made the transition to MLB before. The Mariners — who within the previous two years had shed superstars Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez from their squad — won Suzuki’s rights and signed him, but his struggles in his first spring training caused manager Lou Piniella concern. Yet it all worked out, and in spectacular fashion. Suzuki led the AL with a .350 batting average, won Rookie of the Year and MVP honors while helping the Mariners to a record 116 wins, and began 10-year streaks of All-Star selections and Gold Glove awards.

All of this played out during a time when sabermetricians downplayed the value of batting average relative to on-base and slugging percentages. Like Derek Jeter, Suzuki was more a fan favorite than a stathead one, though his additional contributions on the bases and in right field helped him rank third among all position players for that decade-long stretch with 54.8 WAR, trailing only Albert Pujols (81.4) and Rodriguez (71.5). But Suzuki wasn’t just about the numbers. Beneath his near-religious devotion to routine burned a competitive fire that was offset by a sly sense of humor, both of which featured copious quantities of f-bombs that were hardly lost in translation, to hear others tell the stories.

With his eligibility for election to the Hall of Fame delayed for a year by his two-game cameo in Tokyo in 2019, Suzuki is finally on the ballot, and the question isn’t whether he’ll be elected but whether he’ll become the first position player to do so unanimously. (Mariano Rivera was the first pitcher to do so, on the 2019 ballot.) Odds are that he’ll merely settle for a stratospheric share of the vote, but no matter how it plays out, you can expect to see him in Cooperstown — already a place with which he’s quite familiar due to numerous past visits — come next July.

Ichiro Suzuki was born on October 22, 1973, in Nichi Kasugai-gun, Japan, a suburb of Nagoya, the country’s third-largest city. He’s the younger of two children of Nobuyuki and Yoshie Suzuki. Nobuyuki, who himself pitched in high school, taught his son the game at an early age, albeit in a rigorous way that eventually scarred their relationship. From ESPN’s Wright Thompson in 2018:

When Ichiro was 3, Nobuyuki bought him his first glove, made of shiny leather. It cost two weeks’ salary. Nobuyuki taught his son to clean and polish it carefully. It wasn’t a toy, he said. It was a tool. He taught his right-handed son to hit lefty, to gain a few extra steps out of the batter’s box. They went to a nearby park, every day the same: 50 pitches, 200 soft-toss swings and 50 fungo drills. At night, they went to a batting cage near the Nagoya airport and Ichiro would take 250 to 300 swings on a pitching machine. They did this 365 days a year. Sometimes it got so cold that young Ichiro couldn’t button his shirt, his fingers too stiff to work. In elementary school, he wrote in an essay that he played with other children only two or three days a year. Once Ichiro didn’t want to practice baseball. He wanted to run around with his friends, so he defiantly sat down in the middle of the field. A furious Nobuyuki started throwing baseballs at his son, but Ichiro’s fast reflexes allowed him to avoid them. Ones aimed directly for his face he easily caught.

“Ichiro started this life in third grade and hasn’t stopped,” Thompson added, noting that Suzuki told author Robert Whiting that his father’s behavior “bordered on child abuse.” Between that and his father’s mismanagement of his son’s finances, the two are apparently estranged.

Missing from Thompson’s description of the grueling practices is that the young Suzuki built strength in his wrists and honed his unorthodox stroke by swinging a coal shovel. From a 1994 Washington Post article by T.R. Reid, done at a point when Suzuki was a 20-year-old hitting .385 for the Orix Blue Wave:

It was in his school days that Ichiro started swinging the big coal shovel for practice, a drill that has had a clear effect on his swing. As analyzed ad infinitum in the sports media here this summer, Ichiro’s shovel-trained swing is one of the fastest ever recorded. He gets the bat around in .18 seconds, about twice as fast as the average batter, according to a study by the NHK network. That means he has more time to look over the pitch and figure out where it is headed.

… Ichiro does all this from a strangely contorted batting stance that is hardly poetry in motion. During the pitcher’s windup, Ichiro picks up his front leg and swings it like a long, slow pendulum back toward the catcher. Thus he is virtually tottering on one foot, weight far back, bat cocked, as the pitch approaches the plate.

Growing up, Suzuki pitched as well as hit. After starring at his junior high school, he had a choice of whether to go to a top-ranked academic high school or a top-ranked baseball one; he chose the latter, Aikodai Meiden Kokko. He lived in the dormitory 11 months out of the year, and as an underclassman had to endure hours of menial “character-building” chores as a means of instilling the proper humility and respect. Only the top 17 of his school’s 51 players were granted daily practice, an exhausting training regimen that ran from 3:30 to 8:00 p.m., and after a dinner break resumed with special batting practice at 9:00 p.m.

According to Whiting, Suzuki hit .502 with 19 homers, 131 steals, and just 10 strikeouts (none swinging) in 536 at-bats over his three-year high school career. As a pitcher he showed an exceptional fastball and a good curve, but a bike accident compromised his form. He led Meiden to the prestigious Koshien national high school tournament twice.

Though he showed off a preternatural cool in addition to his physical gifts and strong performances, Suzuki slipped to the fourth and final round in the November 1991 professional draft out of concerns for his size (then 5-foot-9 and 120 pounds). The Kobe-based Orix Blue Wave of the Japan Pacific League chose him, and signed him with a bonus of $43,000. Suzuki spent most of the 1992 and ’93 seasons with Orix’s farm team in the Japan West League, with batting averages of .366 and .371, but he also played 83 games for the big club, with disappointing results (.253/.276/.305 in 95 PA in ’92, .188/.212/.266 in 64 PA in ’93). Orix manager Shozo Doi — already unpopular as a replacement for Hall of Fame manager Toshiharu Ueda — did not believe Suzuki’s pendulum leg-swing would work in the majors, but when he ordered him to change, a defiant Suzuki refused.

He would get the last laugh. Doi was fired after the 1993 season, replaced by Akira Ōgi, a true believer who not only placed Suzuki in the starting lineup but dreamed up a gimmick that stuck. Instead of wearing “Suzuki” on the back of his jersey – as common a surname as Smith in the U.S. — he would wear “Ichiro,” a move that was cleared with the commissioner’s office in spring training. “Surprised, to say the least, Suzuki, who was 20, had little leverage to protest,” wrote the New York Times’ Brad Lefton in 2009.

“At first, I wasn’t happy about it at all,” Suzuki told Lefton. “People laughed wherever we would go, and that really bothered me. But as I reflect back on it now, the experiences of that season provided my foundation and lend tremendous support to what I’m doing today.”

Suzuki was sensational, hitting .385/.445/.550 with 13 homers and 29 steals while becoming the first player to reach 200 hits in an NPB season, which at the time was just 130 games; he finished with 210. His performance not only kicked off streaks of seven consecutive batting titles, All-Star appearances, Gold Gloves, and Best Nine selections from 1994–2000, but he won the first of three straight Pacific League MVP awards.

Over that seven-season span, Suzuki hit a combined .353/.421/.522 while averaging 17 home runs and 28 stolen bases. He set career highs with 25 homers and 49 steals in 1995 while helping Orix to its first JPL pennant in 12 years; the Blue Wave lost to the Yakult Swallows, the Japan Central League champions, that year but beat the Yomiuri Giants in 1996 for their first championship in franchise history.

The 1996 season included some other notable events. For one, Suzuki took a turn on the mound to close out the NPB All-Star game, touching 90 mph with his fastball (also note the Hideki Matsui cameo):

After the season, Suzuki participated in the MLB Japan All-Star Series for the first time, playing against future Hall of Famers Pedro Martinez, Mike Piazza, Cal Ripken Jr., Ivan Rodriguez, as well as Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds. Also on the MLB team was Nomo, the 1995 NL Rookie of the Year and the first Japanese player to attain stardom in the U.S. “The excitement I felt in that series was definitely a turning point. Instead of just something I admired from afar, the majors became a set goal of mine,” he later said in the 2002 book Ichiro on Ichiro.

After hitting .380 against major leaguers in the series two years later, Suzuki drew praise from Mariners pitcher Jamie Moyer for his bat control and his speed, though U.S. squad skipper Mike Hargrove, who praised his throwing arm, said he envisioned him as a fourth outfielder, calling him, “A slap hitter who can run.” Suzuki began to openly muse about playing in MLB nonetheless.

By this point, Japanese pitchers Hideki Irabu and Shigetoshi Hasegawa had followed in Nomo’s footsteps, establishing themselves in the majors. Meanwhile, the Mariners were making inroads with Suzuki. Former major leaguer Jim Colborn, who served as Orix’s pitching coach from 1990–93, became the Mariners’ scouting coordinator for the Pacific Rim. He brought Suzuki jerseys of Griffey, his favorite player, and when the right fielder came stateside to shoot television commercials, hosted him at his Ventura, California home, and threw batting practice to him at nearby college fields. By 1999, the Mariners and Blue Wave had expanded an existing working agreement to allow Orix players to work out at the Mariners’ spring training camp in Peoria. Shagging balls alongside Jay Buhner, Suzuki turned some heads with his throws.

With a squad centered around no. 1 picks Griffey (1987) and Rodriguez (1993) as well as future Hall of Famers Johnson and Edgar Martinez, the Mariners made the playoffs for the first time in their 18-year history in 1995, and did so again in ’97. They couldn’t afford to keep the band together, however. At the 1998 deadline, they traded Johnson, a pending free agent, to the Astros for infielder Carlos Guillén and pitchers Freddy Garcia and John Halama (as the player to be named later). In February 2000, they dealt Griffey to the Reds for a four-player package headlined by Mike Cameron. They won the AL Wild Card and advanced to the ALCS before losing to the Yankees in 2000, then braced themselves to lose Rodriguez to free agency; he would sign a record-setting 10-year, $252 million deal with the Rangers in late January 2001.

Under international rules, Suzuki wasn’t supposed to be eligible to come to MLB until attaining free agency following the 2001 season, but with the Blue Wave concerned they couldn’t afford to retain him, in the fall of 2000 they allowed him to go through the recently-revised posting system, in which MLB teams bid in a silent auction to determine the level of compensation for a player’s team if they signed him. Colborn had convinced new general manager Pat Gillick to pursue Suzuki aggressively, and Gillick in turn persuaded principal owner Hiroshi Yamauchi, a Nintendo chairman who enjoyed seeing Suzuki play in Japan, to get onboard. Envisioning him as their leadoff hitter and everyday right fielder, the Mariners won his rights with a $13.125 million bid, then signed him to a three-year, $14 million contract in late November 2000.

Suzuki didn’t make a great first impression during spring training, too often grounding weakly to the left side. Teammates were concerned he looked overmatched. According to the Seattle Times’ Larry Stone in 2011, the turning point came during one Cactus League game:

“He was hitting to left field a lot, and they were really shading him over, playing him almost like a right-handed pull hitter,” Piniella said. “I told him he needed to pull the ball, and he said, No problem. The next at-bat, he hit one out of the park to right and said, ‘Are you happy now?’

“I told Ichiro, ‘You can do whatever you want the rest of the year.’”

Suzuki went 2-for-5 against the A’s on Opening Day, collecting late-inning singles against T.J. Mathews and Jim Mecir after starter Tim Hudson had retired him three times. Four days later, he went 4-for-6 in a 10-inning game, bookending the hit parade with a double off Rick Helling in the first and a decisive two-run homer off Jeff Zimmerman in the 10th. On April 11, after entering a game against the A’s as a pinch-hitter, he made “The Throw,” a laser beam from right field to third base to retire Terrence Long trying to advance on a single. “Ichiro threw something out of Star Wars down there!” shouted exuberant broadcaster Dave Niehaus.

Suzuki was off to the races, his mannerisms and his play at the plate, on the bases, and in the field standing out. Favoring contact over power — a choice that would fuel endless speculation about the shape of his production — and able to go to all fields, he tested opposing defenses because he seemed to place the ball at will. “They had the left fielder on the left-field line, they had the third baseman almost shaking hands with him, they had the infield halfway in, had the second baseman pulled sometimes—you saw every defense that you could see,” said bench coach John McLaren. “[Ichiro] held that bat up like a magic wand, like, ‘What do we got here?’”

Suzuki quickly became a fan favorite, the first rookie to lead the majors in All-Star votes. Coincidentally, the All-Star Game itself was set for Seattle; Suzuki opened the bottom of the first with a single off Johnson, by this point the ace of the Diamondbacks.

With the exception of a tepid July, Suzuki stayed hot all season. He collected his 200th hit on August 28, in the Mariners’ 132nd game, and finished with 242, fueling a .350/.381/.457 (126 OPS+) line. His batting average and 56 stolen bases both led the league, while his 7.4 WAR ranked fourth. With second baseman Bret Boone turning in an 8.8-WAR career year, Martinez offering his typical brilliance at the plate, and Garcia posting a league-best 3.05 ERA, the Mariners surpassed the 114-win 1998 Yankees, finishing with 116 wins.

Unlike those Yankees, however, the Mariners couldn’t parlay regular season brilliance into a championship. They were pushed to the brink by Cleveland in the Division Series, losing two out of the first three games, but winning in five; Suzuki had three three-hit games and tied Martinez’s Division Series record (from 1995 against the Yankees) of 12 hits while batting .600/.619/.650. In the ALCS, the Yankees cooled him off and eliminated the Mariners in five games.

After the season, Suzuki took home an armful of awards, starting with a Gold Glove and his first of three Silver Sluggers. He came within one vote of a unanimous win for Rookie of the Year; one writer tabbed CC Sabathia, who’s also debuting on this ballot. Suzuki then edged reigning AL MVP winner Jason Giambi for the honors, joining Fred Lynn (1975) as the only players to win both awards in the same season.

The Mariners dropped to 93 wins and third place in the four-team AL West in 2002, and then 93 wins and second in ’03. Suzuki performed well, but not quite up to his rookie level. He recorded 208 hits and a .321/.388/.425 (120 OPS+) slash line with eight homers, 31 steals, and 3.6 WAR in his sophomore season, and 212 hits and a .312/.352/.436 (112 OPS+) with 13 homers, 34 steals, and 5.6 WAR in his third year. After the 2003 season, he signed a four-year, $44 million extension.

At the 2002 All-Star Game, Suzuki showed off a competitive spirit and sense of humor that began a tradition for the AL squad, one in which he’d always get the last word in a pregame meeting. From a 2021 oral history at The Athletic:

Randy Winn, Mariners teammate: This is 2002. I’m at the All-Star Game and Joe Torre is the manager. Joe brings us all in and says something very nice, very professional, very Joe Torre, very even and monotone… After he finishes, he goes, “All right, Ichiro, what do you have to say?” I was like, “Wow, why is he calling Ichiro? Of all people to say something …”

Jim Leyland, Tigers manager: All of the sudden he pops up: “Let’s kick their fucking fat asses.”

… Rick Griffin, Mariners trainer: By the time we got to 2010, he’d added a few more lines to it and had added some more F-bombs.

The bottom fell out for the Mariners in 2004 as they plummeted to 63-99. Just about everything went wrong — everything except their star right fielder. Though he started slowly (.255/.309/.304 in April), he posted batting averages of .400 or higher in May, July, and August, and hit a jaw-dropping .429/.465/.517 after the All-Star break en route to a season line of .372/.414/.455, and a career-best 130 OPS+. Not only did he win his second batting title, he broke George Sisler’s single-season record of 257 hits, set in 1920. The record-setting hit was a single off the Rangers’ Ryan Drese on October 1.

Suzuki’s 9.2 WAR set a career high and led the AL. But unfortunately, the Mariners could not surround him with enough good players for the team to consistently contend, a common thread across the regimes of general managers Bill Bavasi (2003 to mid-’08) and Jack Zduriencik (late 2008 to ’13). From 2004–12, Seattle finished last in the AL West seven times, even losing 101 games in both ’08 — to become the first 100-loss, $100-million payroll team — and ’10. The Mariners did go 88-74 in 2007, and 85-77 two years later, but it would take them until ’21 and ’22 to have back-to-back winning records, and until the last of those seasons to secure another playoff berth.

Amid this ongoing mess, Suzuki continued to churn out hits. From 2005–10 he hit .325/.370/.421 (114 OPS+) while averaging 220 hits, nine homers, 38 steals, and 4.8 WAR, and continuing his streaks of 200-hit seasons with All-Star and Gold Glove selections. He set a career high for home runs with 15 in 2005, stole 45 bases in 47 attempts in ’06, set a post-’04 high for hits with 238 in ’07, and reeled off a 27-game hitting streak in ’09. He finished as runner-up for the batting title both in 2007 (.351) and ’09 (.352).

In 2006 Suzuki was one of two major leaguers (along with reliever Akinori Otsuka) who joined the Sadaharu Oh-managed Japanese national team for the first World Baseball Classic. He rose to the occasion, hitting .364/.447/.485 with a double and a home run. He singled, doubled, and scored three times in Japan’s 10-6 win over Cuba in the finals. Returning in 2009 as one of five major leaguers on Japan’s roster, he hit a meager .273/.273/.364, but his two-run single against South Korea in the 10th inning of the finals proved decisive.

In 2007, Suzuki put on a show in the All-Star Game at San Francisco, going 3-for-3 with an inside-the-park home run, to date the only such homer in All-Star history. His drive off Chris Young caromed off AT&T Park’s right-center field wall at an odd angle as Griffey, the NL’s right fielder, headed in the wrong direction. The play wasn’t even close.

The two-run homer gave the AL a lead it never relinquished in the 5-4 win, and Suzuki was named the game’s MVP. Three days later, he signed a five-year, $90 million extension with the Mariners, with $25 million of that deferred.

In 2011, the 37-year-old Suzuki finally showed definitive signs of aging, as his 10-year streaks came to an end. After collecting 214 hits with a 113 OPS+ and 3.7 WAR in 2010, he slipped to 184 hits, an 86 OPS+ (.272/.310/.335), and 0.6 WAR. In 2012, his final year under contract, his play eroded even further, and by July it was clear the Mariners were again going nowhere. With free agency approaching, the 38-year-old Suzuki quietly asked the Mariners to trade him. Zduriencik obliged in somewhat shocking fashion. When the Yankees came to town to play the Mariners on July 23, the trade was announced: Suzuki and about $5 million in exchange for pitching prospects Danny Farquhar and D.J. Mitchell. The deal made headlines, but from a competitive standpoint the impact seemed minor. Wrote one wag, “A quick look at his stat lines suggests he’s suffering from Acute Bat Death Syndrome.”

Suzuki moved from Safeco Field’s home clubhouse to its visiting one, donned the Yankees’ road grays, and received a lengthy ovation from Seattle fans, to whom he doffed his batting helmet and bowed. He singled off Kevin Millwood, then stole a base. For the next two months and change, he hit like the Ichiro of old, batting .322/.340/.454 (113 wRC+) in 67 games while helping the Yankees win a narrow AL East race.

Facing the Orioles in the Division Series, in his first playoff appearance since 2001, Suzuki drove in runs with a double off starter Jason Hammel and a single off reliever Jim Johnson, keying a 7-2 Game 1 victory. He added another RBI double off Hamel in a 3-1 win in Game 5, then went 4-for-6 with a two-run ninth-inning homer off the Tigers’ Jose Valverde in the ALCS opener. While Raul Ibañez’s two-run homer sent the game into extra innings, the Yankees lost Jeter to a broken left ankle later in that game, and not only did they go down in 12 innings, they were swept.

In December, Suzuki re-signed with the Yankees on a two-year, $13 million deal. His returns diminished, and the team missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1992–93, but his tenure wasn’t without highlights. On August 21, 2013, his 2,722nd MLB hit — a single off the Blue Jays’ R.A. Dickey — gave him an even 4,000 for his career, including his NPB total.

The ensuing celebration felt like a proxy for Suzuki’s 3,000th hit in the majors, given that he was two months and a day shy of his 40th birthday, and seemed unlikely to reach the more common milestone stateside. “It was supposed to be a number that was special to me,” he said afterward through a translator. “What happened tonight, I wasn’t expecting. When my teammates came out to first base, that was very special, and obviously the fans — I wasn’t expecting so much joy and happiness from them.”

Asked by this scribe whether 3,000 hits in MLB was on his radar, Suzuki said he couldn’t look so far ahead:

“I get asked that a lot, but I can’t have that as a goal. What happens today determines what happens tomorrow, meaning I’ve got to perform today in order to be in the lineup the next day. I don’t make goals that are so far away. What I do is do what I can every single day and build off that and see where that takes me.”

Though he hit for just a 77 OPS+ (.262/.297/.342) that season, Suzuki’s 20 steals (in 24 attempts) and strong defense helped him to 2.1 WAR, which would stand as his highest total after 2010. He finished his deal with the Yankees still 156 hits shy of 3,000, then made the curious decision to sign a one-year, $2 million deal with the Marlins, who appeared set in the outfield with a Giancarlo Stanton–Marcell Ozuna–Christian Yelich alignment, and who had to be convinced he would accept a part-time role. With the three regulars all sidelined by injuries for extended stretches, though, Suzuki played more games (153) than any of them, but he set career worsts with a .229/.282/.279 (58 OPS+) line and -1.1 WAR. His biggest highlight came in the eighth inning of the season’s final game. With the Marlins trailing 6-2, he took the mound and threw an inning, allowing two hits and one run with a fastball that peaked at 88.4 mph.

Still 65 hits short of 3,000 — and, if you counted his NPB hits, 43 short of Rose’s 4,256 — Suzuki re-upped on another one-year, $2 million deal, this one with a club option for 2017. Now 42 years old, he enjoyed his best offensive season since 2010, hitting .291/.354/.376 (102 OPS+) with 1.6 WAR while playing in 143 games, even with the starting outfielders healthier than in ’15. On April 29 against the Brewers, he swiped second base to record the 500th steal of his major league career. On June 15 at Petco Park, he beat out an infield single off Luis Perdomo in the first inning, then doubled off Fernando Rodney in the ninth for his 4,256th and 4,257th hits. While not technically a record, the achievement was celebrated on the field and by the fans, and inevitably rubbed Rose and his defenders the wrong way.

“I don’t think you can compare,” said Suzuki through his interpreter. “Obviously, it’s a combined record. So I always just say, ‘What people think about that record, if they recognize it, I’ll be happy.’” He acknowledged Rose’s public expressions of discomfort with the comparison, and said that 3,000 hits in MLB had become his goal. “To be honest, this wasn’t something I was making a goal. It was just kind of a weird situation to be in.”

At the time he collected his 4,257th hit, Suzuki was batting .349/.410/.397, but he cooled off considerably, and played sporadically in July. Finally, on August 7 at Coors Field, he banged a triple off the right field wall against the Rockies’ Chris Rusin, becoming the 30th player to reach 3,000 hits, and just the fourth born outside the 50 states, following Roberto Clemente (Puerto Rico), Rod Carew (Panama), and Rafael Palmeiro (Cuba).

“I wanted to see it go over the fence, but after I heard that Paul Molitor was the other person to do it [triple for his 3,000th hit], I was glad it didn’t go over,” Suzuki said afterward.

Suzuki spent one more year with the Marlins, who picked up his 2017 option and added one for ’18, which they would later decline. In March 2018, he agreed to an incentive-laden deal to rejoin the Mariners. Understandably, the move was greeted with considerable fanfare, but while he was in the Opening Day lineup and collected two hits the next day, success proved fleeting. After just 47 plate appearances spread across 15 of the Mariners’ first 29 games, the team released him on May 3. He did not officially retire, instead agreeing to serve as a special assistant to the front office, a role that kept him around to mentor younger teammates. “We want to make sure we capture all of the value that Ichiro brings to this team off the field,” said general manager Jerry Dipoto.

Both sides left the door open for a return in 2019. He made a brief one, joining the Mariners for their season-opening trip to face the A’s in the Tokyo Dome. He went 0-for-5 in the two games, announcing before the second one that he would officially retire afterward. After nearly beating out an infield single in the top of the eighth, he took the field for the bottom of the frame, then departed and bid “Sayonara” to the Japanese fans.

Suzuki finished his major league career with 3,089 hits. That ranks 25th all-time, but once you factor in his late start, only Rose collected more hits (3,357) from his age-27 season onward. Suzuki is one of seven players to pair 3,000 hits with 500 steals:

Throw in the honors and awards — which push his Hall of Fame Monitor score to a gaudy 235, tied with Griffey and one point behind Ripken — and that’s a no-doubt Hall of Famer. Yes, his stats are a bit padded because he hung around for so long without delivering much on-field value (aside from entertainment), but he’s hardly the first player about whom that can be said.

Given those traditional measures and accolades, it scarcely matters that Suzuki ranks “only” 17th in JAWS among right fielders, 4.8 points below the standard. That’s still above sluggers Sammy Sosa, Dave Winfield, and Vladimir Guerrero, among others. It’s worth pointing out that even while missing some prime seasons before coming stateside, his 43.7-WAR seven-year peak ranks 15th, 1.3 points above the standard.

The question of whether Suzuki will be a unanimous choice for Cooperstown has loomed over his impending eligibility since Rivera ran the table in 2019. The “tradition” of non-unanimity was established with the first Hall of Fame election in 1936, when even Cobb (98.2%), Wagner and Babe Ruth (both 95.1%) had their holdouts. For as obvious as the elections of, say, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, and Henry Aaron should have been, even they fell short, though Aaron’s 97.8% in 1982 did stand as the second-highest share until Tom Seaver received 98.8% in ’92; he was left off just five ballots. Griffey missed unanimity by just three votes in 2016, and after Rivera — by wide consensus the best relief pitcher of all time thanks to his saves record and postseason résumé, but still a strange choice to set the record — Jeter fell one vote short the following year.

While I don’t see how any writer in their right mind could object to Suzuki’s election — and unlike in some past years, this ballot isn’t so crowded as to require a strategic vote — recent history shows the cloak of anonymity can do strange things. None of the writers who omitted Griffey or Jeter have ever been identified, but within a body of roughly 400 voters there will always be a few petty and selfish ones who make the process about themselves.

Still, it will scarcely matter. Ichiro Suzuki is going to Cooperstown in short order, and the celebration will spark joy on two continents.