Billy Wagner
It seems like every year, there’s a guy in his final year of eligibility with a plausible but not overwhelming case. Say hello to 2025's iteration of that player: Billy Wagner.
Last year, Wagner got 73.8 percent of the vote, putting him just five total votes short of election. Can he find that extra handful of positive ballots this year?
The case for Wagner begins with his career 2.31 ERA, the best among the seven other pitchers on this year’s ballot. Add in his 0.998 WHIP, which, again, is the best on the ballot. Oh, and he also had 422 saves and struck out 1,196 batters in 903 innings of work.
The case against Wagner is two-fold. First, he was a bad postseason pitcher. In 14 October games covering 11.2 innings of work, Wagner was touched up for 13 earned runs, a 10.03 ERA. Granted, 11.2 innings is a small sample size, but it’s hard to argue around a double-digit ERA.
The second criticism has always seemed more valid. Wagner’s entire career consisted of 903 innings spread over 16 seasons; that’s fewer than 60 innings pitched per season.
Now, they were mostly leverage-rich innings, but it still just works out to a 27.7 WAR, ranking Wagner 25th among the 28 ballot names for overall contribution to team success.
My personal hunch is that at least five voters are sufficiently swayed by emotion to give Wagner his tenth-year pass this voting season, but it’s a close call.