Of all the Yankees’ young players, fans may have the highest hopes for the Martian.

Last week saw the announcement of the 2025 Hall of Fame class, marking one of the highlights of the MLB offseason. Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia cruised in on their first ballots, while Billy Wagner made it through on his last. We asked fans to react to the Hall results in this week’s slate of SB Nation Reacts polls.

But first, we asked Yankees fans about which young player they’re most optimistic about heading into 2025:

Kyle Thele

For a team that gets flack for being too old or unathletic, this is quite the list of young, talented choices. Austin Wells was the best catcher in the AL for much of 2024 and finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting, while Luis Gil won the dang award outright. And despite an inconsistent bat, Anthony Volpe has established himself as a first-division regular at age-23, running consecutive 3+ WAR seasons thanks to his superlative defense and baserunning.

And yet, none of those players finished first in our poll, with Yankee fans opting for outfielder Jasson Domínguez. After years of hype, Dominguez finally appears set to get a real shot in the majors. Sure, Domínguez impressed during a cup of coffee at the end of 2023, and made a few appearances at the big-league level in 2024, but in 2025, the Yankees appear fully committed to him. He’s slated as their starting center fielder, and will have every chance to make good on his promise. It’s a bit surprising fans went with him over young players that have already played at a high level in the majors, but that might just speak to the upside Domínguez possesses.

And now, on to the results from our MLB-wide polls:

Kyle Thele

Kyle Thele

Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones both have been seeing increased support for their Hall of Fame cases. Both have good shots of making it next year, with Beltrán having eclipsed the 70 percent mark on BBWAA ballots and Jones reaching 66 percent. Both lag in the poll of our readers, though, with barely over half of fans supporting Beltran, and 61 percent supporting Jones. Beltrán’s case is of course complicated by his role in the Astros sign stealing scandal, in which he was implicated as a ring leader. Fans may still hold that against Beltrán, even as the stain of the scandal appears to fade for the writers casting ballots.

Kyle Thele

Ichiro missed unanimous induction by one measly vote, joining Derek Jeter in that infamous club. A little over half of fans were surprised by this development, though I’m not sure they should be. Mariano Rivera remains the only player to be voted in unanimously, and it seems that no matter how qualified the candidate, some voter somewhere will find a reason to leave him off on the first ballot.

We also asked fans whether they would change anything about the voting process:

Kyle Thele

The most popular initiative was to allow players to stay on the ballot; as of now, players only have ten years on the ballot. However, the most popular single choice was to make no changes. Changes to the Hall’s process are relatively rare, though they did make a change a decade ago, lowering the number of years players have on the ballot from 15 to ten, seemingly in part to avoid another five years of discourse surrounding the candidacies of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.