When Billy Wagner called it a career after a short tour with the Braves, he spoke like a man who wasn't worried about whether he'd make or endure on a Hall of Fame ballot. "I'm not going to change anyone's mind about whether I'm a Hall of Famer," the longtime relief pitcher said. "People are either going to like me or hate me, and I can't change their minds. Besides, life is about a lot more than this game."
That was 15 years ago. Tomorrow should reveal that enough voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America have changed their minds. Wagner's first Hall ballot showed him with 10.5 percent of the vote. At this writing, his final appearance on the BBWAA ballot should usher him into Cooperstown with at least 85 percent of the vote, well above the minimum needed.
Thus would Billy the Kid stand on the induction stage with outfielder Ichiro Suzuki (bank on it: he'll become the first unanimous election among positions players on their first Hall ballot), CC Sabathia (another first ballot lock, though a hair over seven points less than Ichiro), and Carlos Beltrán. (80.3 percent.)
Almost a week ago, Wagner wasn't sounding as sanguine as he did upon his retirement from the mound. "You're sitting here and you can't control [the outcome]," he told The Athletic's Tyler Kepner by phone. "It's tough. I hate it. It's just not been a very fun experience, especially when it comes down to your tenth and final ballot. It's not going to be pleasant. It's a grind, but in a couple of days, this will be over — one way or the other, good or bad."
That wouldn't necessarily be true. Wagner could and likely would make an appearance on a future ballot of the Hall's Contemporary Baseball Era (Players) Committee, perhaps as soon as next December. But it looks as though nobody has to worry about that anymore. Wagner, especially.
Last week you'd have had to go the extra hundred miles to convince him. Last year, he waited and waited only to fall short by five votes. When Kepner asked Wagner if that compared to being spurned for a prom date with his buddies watching live and millions more watching on television, he couldn't resist laughing. Then, he calmed down again and answered soberly.
"My gosh. You've got thirty kids looking at you," he began.
I'm emotional, I don't want to be emotional, so I'm fighting it back like, "Well, you know, it's great." You're saying all the things you need to say, but it was awful. So the ballot comes out, they take all their stuff and leave — and you're still going through practice. There's no, "Hey guys, we're going to take a five-minute break here." You couldn't do anything. That was rough. I was so embarrassed.
If the current indicators hold, and I'm not sure how you can tumble from 85 percent of the vote to falling beneath the 73 percent line without some very suspect 11th-hour activity, the man who stood 5'10" as a human being but about 10'5" to the batters he faced for the Astros, the Phillies, the Mets, the Red Sox, and the Braves, is about to become anything but embarrassed.
Which is more than you can say for those batters over the sixteen-year career that ended in 2010. You might wish to become the proverbial fly on the wall if those batters could round up for a seminar called, "How Not to Hit Billy Wagner — Because You Can't." The beginning of Wagner's Hall of Fame case, and possibly the end, too, is this: opposing hitters could only hit .187 against him.
.187.
Not even The Mariano himself kept hitters that sharply out of luck. Wagner's .187 batting average against him will become the lowest BAA of any Hall of Fame relief pitcher. Lower than Rivera and Trevor Hoffman (.211 each), lower than Hoyt Wilhelm (.213), lower than Dennis Eckersley (.225), lower than Goose Gossage (.228), lower than Bruce Sutter (.230), lower than Rollie Fingers (.232), lower than Lee Smith (.235).
Among that group, too, are a mere four who pitched in the most hitter friendly of times: Smith (in the final third of his career), Hoffman, Rivera, and Billy the Kid. That, I've written before and don't mind repeating, should make you wonder what the record would have been if Wagner could have avoided assorted injuries including a late-career Tommy John surgery.
And before you take up carping yet again over his comparatively small number of innings pitched, try to keep these in mind: 1) It wasn't his idea to finish with 903 innings pitched. 2) His lifetime walks/hits per inning pitchd (WHIP) rate, as Kepner pointed out, is lower than any pitcher with 900+ innings in the century between the final game of Hall of Famer Addie Joss and Hall of Famer-to-be Wagner. Including The Mariano and Trevor Time.
If it's numbers you still wish, how about these: the best strikeouts per nine rate (11.92) in baseball history. The best ERA (2.31) by any left-hander in the live ball era (1920 forward). The lowest opposition OPS (.558) in that same century between Joss's and Wagner's final games.
All of which are rather surrrealistic for a fellow whose hardscrabble childhood (and "hardscrabble" is phrasing things politely about a kid for whom peanut butter on a cracker was dinner often enough when he was growing up) including driving himself to throw lefthanded because two right elbow fractures made throwing his natural righthanded impossible.
That's about as close to a self-made Hall of Famer as you can get.
"You're not supposed to get too high or too low," Wagner told Kepner about The Wait, "but you just sit with a big pit in your stomach right now, wondering where this thing's going to go. You're constantly fighting the buildup to that moment." Finally, it looks as though Billy the Kid's going to win his final fight.
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