The Week That Was: January 21-26

The Hall of Fame inducts three new names!

Welcome to the final week of January! Hard to believe we’re already here and that baseball will be back (in some capacity) next month! The past week has been a bustling one, with the biggest story of the week being the Hall of Fame announcements, and we’ll get into the three new Hall of Famers in a moment.

Additionally, new evidence has been released in the case against Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, the Mets unveiled a new road jersey (though Pete Alonso probably won’t be wearing it) and how many games will teams be playing with the automated strike zone this coming season.

Let’s get into it!

Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame inductee announcements were made this past Tuesday evening, and three new names will be added to the coveted halls of Cooperstown: Ichiro Suzuki (who was ONE VOTE short of a unanimous election), CC Sabathia, and after eight years on the ballot, Billy Wagner.

While the one voter who left Ichiro off his ballot feels like a good villain for me to personally align myself against for the remainder of the year, it’s still great to see three such worthy contenders make their way into the Hall. Sabathia and Suzuki were obvious first-ballot inductees, and Wagner was long-suffering, but his trajectory showed this to be his likely finale. Love to see it.

Here are a few good links if you want to dive deeper into the elections.

• Incredible stats about the new Hall of Famers .
• The complete 2025 ballot results .
• 10 players who fell off the Hall of Fame ballot this year .
• Ichiro Suzuki would like to have a little sit-down with the one voter who left him off the ballot .
• Two players just missed the threshold this year .
• Why Ichiro deserves to be a Hall of Famer — from those who know him best .

Quick Hits

• Some interesting details on how many games each team will play with the automated strike zone.

• Some pretty unseemly allegations have cropped up about Mariano Rivera and his wife (trigger warning for sexual abuse discussion).
• Would a salary cap keep teams from having an offseason like the Dodgers? And is that really the answer?
• Which teams are poised to be better in 2025?
• The Mets unveiled their new road uniforms .
• Bryce Harper has become.. a TikTok food influencer?
• New audio evidence shows Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter pretending to be the Dodgers’ superstar in phone calls .
• Miguel Rojas was kind enough to give up his uniform number to incoming pitcher Roki Sasaki .
• Roki Sasaki explains why he signed with the Dodgers .
• Charlie Blackmon has been hired by the Rockies as a special assistant to the GM.

Social Media Highlights