When Joe Mauer exited the Clark Sports Center stage a little before 4 p.m. ET Sunday afternoon, the countdown to the 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame election season began — a six-month period that will carry with it varying degrees of suspense for the two dozen or so candidates who will land on the ballot distributed in late November to voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
But for Billy Wagner, the wait and the suspense began on Jan. 23, when the 2024 balloting results were announced and he garnered 73.8% of the vote, leaving him just five votes shy of reaching the 75% requirement that would have allowed him to join Mauer, Adrian Beltre, Todd Helton and Jim Leyland as the Hall’s newest inductees.
The good news for Wagner — who ranks eighth all-time with 422 saves and finished his career with a 2.31 ERA and an 0.99 WHIP while averaging 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings — is that every candidate who missed election by fewer than 10 votes has eventually been enshrined.
But Wagner is entering his 10th and final year of eligibility via the writers, which means the fate of the former Mets, Astros, Phillies, Red Sox, and Braves closer will be left in the hands of a future committee era — i.e. the rebranded Veterans Committee — if he doesn’t reach the 75% threshold this time.
“Everybody goes ‘Well, shoot, you’re five votes away, nobody’s ever not gotten in,” Wagner said as he began grinning during an appearance at Citi Field on July 9. “Well, there’s always that first.”
Rollie Fingers and Chipper Jones don’t have ballots, but the Hall of Famers are hoping Wagner avoids making an unusual bit of history.
“We don’t have any left-handers in there right now — he was a pretty good left-handed relief pitcher,” Fingers, a 1992 inductee who retired with a then-record 341 saves, said following an autograph signing in Cooperstown Friday afternoon. “Had great stuff, threw the ball hard, did the job for Houston for a long time. So I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be in.”
Jones was 3-of-21 with no walks or extra-base hits and 12 strikeouts against Wagner, who finished his career with Atlanta in 2010.
“I much preferred him as a teammate as opposed to the guy on the other side,” Jones said during an autograph signing Friday afternoon. “He gave it to me pretty good. Man, you’re talking about one of the most dominant relievers of our era.”
Wagner said he understood the difficulty in judging closers across different eras or even against their contemporaries. Hall of Famers Fingers, Goose Gossage, and the late Bruce Sutter rank first, second, and third, in that order, in saves of four outs or more. Wagner — who debuted in 1995, nearly a decade after Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley mastered the art of the three-out save — is tied for 143rd with 36 saves of four outs or more.
“Goose’s era was special — you throw three innings, you get three days off, but you left it all out there,” Wagner said.
Mariano Rivera, who became the first unanimous Hall of Fame inductee in 2019, had 119 saves of four outs or more while throwing his signature cutter, which was perhaps the most dominant pitch of all-time.
“You could be successful, but you couldn’t be that successful,” Wagner said. “I thought Mariano was the greatest pitcher I’ve ever seen.”
And now, one more time, Wagner waits to see if he’ll join Rivera in Cooperstown.
