HOF voters need to get serious and put Astros closer Billy Wagner in Cooperstown

One unfortunate side effect of the Hall of Fame voting process for baseball is that extremely deserving candidates end up needing to wait far too long to be inducted. The minority of voters that prefer a small Hall of Fame and/or refuse to vote for anyone from the "steroid era" have outsized influence with their ballots and, unfortunately, former Houston Astros closer Billy Wagner has been left just outside of induction for multiple voting cycles now.

Wagner finished 27 votes shy of induction into Cooperstown in the 2023 class, and last year, the margin that cost Wagner his spot in the Hall of Fame was just five votes. It was a heartbreaking result for one of the best relievers the game has ever seen.

Unfortunately, Wagner finds himself in his last year of eligibility on the general BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. If he doesn't make it in this year, Wagner will be at the mercy of a committee that only votes every two years and has been notoriously stingy when it comes to inducting modern era players.

In short, this could be Wagner's best and last chance at inductio,n and voters need to get their acts together and put him in Cooperstown.

Astros' Billy Wagner's stature as one of the best relievers of all time warrants induction in the Hall of Fame

Wagner's Hall of Fame case is extensive, to put it bluntly. For the counting stat enthusiasts, he has the eighth most saves all-time, and only two other pitchers in baseball history have more saves and strikeouts than Wagner. Both of them (Lee Smith and Craig Kimbrel) are either in the Hall of Fame or are likely to end up there, in Kimbrel's case. When looking at ERA, only Mariano Rivera, who was a unanimous selection in his first year of eligibility, was better than Wagner's 2.31 ERA with a minimum of 900 innings pitched.

For those that tend to favor the analytics side of evaluating players, Wagner sports the best strikeout percentage and highest strikeout rate of all-time. The popular metric for evaluating Hall of Famers across eras, JAWS, has Wagner as one of the six best closers ever. If we are letting relievers into Cooperstown (and we absolutely should, given their importance), leaving Wagner out would be a massive miss.

Unfortunately, Smith's previous Hall of Fame trajectory does create some cause for concern here. No one denied that Smith was one of the best or most feared relievers of his era at the time, but Hall of Fame voters seem to be very reluctant to put relievers in Cooperstown unless they play for the Yankees long-term. Smith never got in on the writers' ballot and had to be inducted via the Today's Game Committee (and only after a healthy amount of lobbying from Tony La Russa).

The changing Hall of Fame electorate does bode well for Wagner and his elite rate stats. As of this moment in time, Wagner has already been included on five ballots he wasn't on previously, according to Ryan Thibodaux's insanely useful and thorough Hall of Fame tracker. One hopes that trend will hold and Wagner finally gets in. Otherwise, Cooperstown will be lesser for it.

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