Ichiro Suzuki was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame Tuesday afternoon, but the news was overshadowed by the voting process.
He received 99.7% of votes and came up just one vote shy of being the second unanimous player to go to Cooperstown. Ichiro would have joined Mariano Rivera as the only two players to receive the honor.
Baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame are not required to publicize their ballots. Many do for transparency, but not everyone does, which leads to this being a mystery that will go unsolved.
Mistakes happen, and there's a chance the voter who didn't check the box next to Ichiro didn't do it intentionally. However, it seems hard to believe someone could forget about him after having the illustrious career that he did.
In his career, Ichiro was a .311 hitter with 117 home runs and 780 RBI. He was never known for his power, but his bat-to-ball skills and speed were second-to-none. Ichiro is just one of 33 players in the sport's history to reach 3,000 career hits.
Even if Ichiro's OPS+ or some other recently-created analytic wasn't the highest, it's pure negligence he was left off of someone's ballot.
In such cases, the Baseball Writers' Association of America needs to step in after reviewing every ballot. Take an extra two hours before releasing the results to review them thoroughly.
If a situation like this happens again, go back to the writer (or writers) and ask them to reconsider leaving a player off their ballot. It doesn't hurt anything to make them look over their ballot one more time before turning it in for good, and this could prompt them to reconsider.
Being a unanimous, first-ballot Hall of Famer is something special. It shouldn't be a participation trophy that everyone gets, which is why Rivera was the first player in history.
But if Ichiro didn't get it, will anyone else ever accomplish that feat?
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