There are not many closers in the Hall. As of right now, Dennis Eckersley, Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, and Hoyt Wilhelm are the only ones with more than 300 saves, but they also played in a time where a closer was not a defined role, it was just someone trustworthy late in games. That said, in a few years, there will be plenty of closers to go around. John Smoltz (Cy Young winner, starter and closer, 200 wins, 150 saves) will be inducted. Maybe not first ballot, but he will. Lee Smith is still on the ballot, and then in a few more years when I have a job (fingers crossed), the two greatest closers ever (Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman) will be inducted. My boss at the Hall this summer was the biggest Rivera fan I have ever met and he says if Mo is not a first ballot Hall of Famer, he will give up baseball for life. That's extreme, though I do agree. So all in all, when those two will be in, you can still count closers on your two hands. It's tough for closers to make it, but Billy Wagner deserves it.
Before we get into stats, Wagner is a freak athlete. For only being 5'11", he broke his right arm twice as a young boy and taught himself to throw left-handed. Let me repeat that: he taught himself to throw left-handed. I can't even brush my teeth left-handed without a trip the emergency room (my dad is a dentist, he can attest), let alone learn flawless mechanics to hit 98 MPH from the hill and make people fear you.
Now on to stats, which are not as impressive as his athletic ability. When his career was all said and done, Wagner racked up 422 saves, good enough for 5th all time, and 3 away from sole possession of 4th all time. He also posted a 2.31 ERA and a .998 WHIP, both really, really impressive. The two men ahead of him in total saves, Lee Smith (3rd all time) and John Franco (4th) both suffered in terms of ERA. Smith has a career ERA of 3.03, still pretty good, but a WHIP of 1.25 and a career W/L of 71-92. In his 10th year of Hall of Fame voting, Smith only received 29%, the lowest he's ever gotten. With the ballot filling up with some of the greatest players ever in the coming years, I doubt he'll ever get any more than that. Franco has a similar issue, with an ERA of 2.89 and a WHIP of 1.333, which is poor for a reliever. So even though they have more saves, that's just a symptom of more time, not necessarily more skill. Wagner's strikeouts per nine is also ridiculous, with a career of 11.9 (wow). Smith's was 8.7 and Franco's was 7.0. Wagner only pitched 903 innings in his career, putting him 97 short of the qualifier for the career stat. Had he gotten to 1,000 innings and maintained that 11.9 K/9, it would have been the best ever.
Wagner had two seasons of 40+ saves and 7 more of 30 or more saves. He was very consistent; between 1997-2008, he averaged 31 saves (including an injury plagued 2000 season). Even more impressively, in his final season at age 38, he posted 37 saves. His arm was still as alive and well as ever. The most earned runs he ever allowed was 21, and he still managed to log 39 saves in 2002.
Sure he didn't have as man saves as other guys, but he was more efficient and lethal than most of them. As if that wasn't impressive enough, he did it with his non-dominant hand. A lot of voters for the Hall refuse to elect anyone from the Steroid Era, but doesn't that make it all the more impressive that he was this good?
Give him the vote.
Thanks for reading.
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