This is it for Billy Wagner on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. He’s in his 10th and final season. He’s off the ballot next year, it’s just a matter of if that’s because he’s made it to Cooperstown or missed out on his last chance.
I think he gets in. I think he deserves to. I’ll be voting for him. Before we get to that, though, let’s take a glance at his ballot progression and chances.
Ballot progression
Remember, a player needs at least 5% of the vote to remain on the ballot and 75% to make the Hall of Fame. Here’s how things have gone for Wagner in his first nine years on the ballot.
- 2016: 10.5%
- 2017: 10.2%
- 2018: 11.1%
- 2019: 16.7%
- 2020: 31.7%
- 2021: 46.4%
- 2022: 51%
- 2023: 68.1%
- 2024: 73.8%
He was only five votes short out of 385 total last year. It doesn’t always happen, but there’s often a final year bump. There are also new voters (hello!) joining the party. Some voters lapse. The voting body changes.
Wagner’s case
The biggest mark against Wagner is his position as a reliever. Relief pitchers in Hall of Fame voting have, for the most part, faced the stigma that “relievers are failed starters.” Wagner was, sort of. He was a starter in the minors before moving to the bullpen, though he never made a major-league start. His is a case where he switched to reliever in the minors and very quickly stuck in the majors. He was such a stud that there was never a consideration to move him back.
Wagner ranks eighth in career saves at 422, trailing the Gold Standards of his generation — Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman — greatly. If you put his rate stats beside Hoffman, though, you’ll see what a beast Wagner was.
Wagner had a 2.31 ERA and 0.998 WHIP. Hoffman finished at 2.87 and 1.058, respectively. Wagner struck out 1,196 hitters, a rate of 11.9 K/9. Hoffman fanned 1,133 at a rate of 9.4 K/9.
This isn’t to denigrate Hoffman. Wagner’s 2.31 ERA through a heavy offensive era meant that he posted a 187 ERA+. Compare that to Hall of Fame relievers Hoyt Wilhelm (147), Goose Gossage (126), Hoffman (141), Lee Smith (148), Rollie Fingers (120) and Bruce Sutter (136) and you get the picture. Rivera’s 205 is obviously another indicator that he’s the best ever, but Wagner trails only him.
The shortfall on Wagner is workload. He managed 903 innings pitched in his career, spent primarily with the Astros with stops with the Mets, Phillies, Braves and Red Sox. Of all the closers mentioned above, the one with the lowest innings total is Sutter at 1,042. Hoffman sits at 1,089 ⅓.
My argument here is that Wagner was so much better on a rate basis in his time that it makes up for the shortfall, but it’s always tough to line those things up.
WAR is a stat that attempts to do so.
Wagner finished with a career WAR of 27.7. Hoffman was at 28. Smith was at 28.9, Fingers at 25.6 and Sutter at 24. In JAWS, Wagner ranks sixth all time among relievers after Rivera, Dennis Eckersley, Wilhelm, Gossage and Hoffman (though rounding to one decimal, Hoffman and Wagner are tied at 23.7). Behind Wagner? Smith, Fingers and Sutter.
Does Wagner really look out of place anywhere here? He has more saves than Sutter, Fingers and Gossage. He has more strikeouts than Sutter, Hoffman and Rivera.
Compared to the other closers, other than The G.O.A.T. Rivera and Eckersley — who got a lot of work as a starter — I’m just not seeing much separation to warrant keeping Wagner out.
If you wanted a fame factor, yes, living through his career as a baseball fan, Billy Wagner was that big a deal. Plus, he had a legendary fastball. In fact, it’s widely hailed as one of the greatest fastballs in MLB history.
There’s another component to consider.
The impact of Wagner in the Hall of Fame
The closer back in the ’70s and into the ’80s saw pitchers working multiple innings quite often. We rarely see that nowadays with the role becoming more and more specialized.
I’m of the opinion that a specialization shouldn’t be completely shut out of a Hall of Fame. As a gigantic Devin Hester fan, I can’t imagine thinking a returner shouldn’t be allowed in the Football Hall of Fame.
The bar should be higher, of course, for specialists. And it is. There are only eight Hall of Fame relievers. The next lowest position has 17 (catcher and third base). There are 66 Hall of Fame starting pitchers.
It’s also hard for me to look ahead and think that it’s possible no future closer can top Wagner. There will be more Hall of Fame relievers. I agree the bar should be higher, but it shouldn’t be non-existent.
With the era of the multi-inning closer long gone, we aren’t very likely to see many closers moving forward get to 1,000 innings and, to reiterate, it seems like the penalty thrown on Wagner has been his workload.
As examples, Kenley Jansen has 868 ⅓ innings right now. Craig Kimbrel has 809 ⅔. Aroldis Chapman has 760.
I’m not saying any or all of those pitchers are Hall of Famers, but that’s the top three of the generation following Wagner. Who would be the next wave with a chance to get in? Any of them? Josh Hader? Emmanuel Clase? Clase only has 158 saves in 312 ⅔ innings so far.
The point is that Wagner getting in should leave the door cracked for Jansen and maybe Kimbrel and/or Chapman and I think that’s ultimately a good thing. The older generation can still cling to the thought that the game used to be better and the players were all so much better and blah blah blah (basically, just talk to Goose Gossage), but it’s awfully difficult for me to tell a younger generation of fans, “nah, you didn’t watch any Hall of Fame relievers for a 20-year period.”
What about K-Rod?
An interesting offshoot from the thought process here is there’s another reliever on the ballot in Francisco Rodríguez, aka “K-Rod.”
This is only his third year on the ballot. He got 10.8% of the vote his first year and went down to 7.8% last year. That doesn’t bode well.
Should a Wagner induction help him?
Rodríguez saved more games with 437 (sixth all-time). He worked more innings with 976, though that’s still short of every other reliever in the Hall. He’s short of Wagner with a 2.86 ERA (148 ERA+) and 1.16 WHIP. He struck out 1,142, which is behind Wagner in both total and rate (10.5 K/9).
Rodríguez’s 24.2 WAR falls a little shy of Wagner, but he ekes out Sutter. Rodríguez sits 13th in JAWS behind Joe Nathan, Tom Gordon and Jonathan Papelbon, but he’s ahead of Smith, Fingers and Sutter.
Where I sit on K-Rod, for now, is that he’s certainly in line behind Wagner and probably sits slightly below the line for me. As I said with Wagner, he’s so overwhelmingly great at the rate stats that it helps make up for that shortfall in workload. Though Rodríguez has a few more innings under his belt, there’s still a shortfall and he doesn’t have the overwhelming boost from the rate stats Wagner does.
But notice that I said, “for now.” I’m always open to changing and I don’t think Rodríguez is that far behind Wagner.
