Out With A Bang

It’s Hall of Fame consideration season.  For the rest of the calendar year, Connections will be looking at some of the names on the 2025 ballot.  

It’s rare to witness the perfect handoff from one immortal to another – the same club, the same position (or role), a short period of time of shared space.  The apex of this transition, and it’s hard to imagine seeing such a perfect convergence again, arrived nearly 75 years ago, when the 1951 Yankees brought a pair of inner-circle center fielders together for a single season:  Joe DiMaggio in his final campaign and Mickey Mantle in his debut effort (not coincidentally, from DiMaggio’s first season in 1936 through Mantle’s last year in 1968, the Yankees captured 22 pennants).  By the mid-2010s, another close to perfect “here you go, it’s all yours transaction” seemed, in retrospect, to have recently arrived, as closer Craig Kimbrel ascended to elite status following one shared season (in 2010) with one of the most dominant hurlers to have ever filled the closing role, Billy Wagner.

Even as Kimbrel (and his fellow debutants in 2010, Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen) fired and spun a collective revisioning of how untouchable a ninth-inning hurler could be, Wagner’s status continued to be undeniable, as it is to this day.  It’s a testament to how one-of-a-kind Wagner was for his era, how remarkable his career numbers are, and how he maintains a special niche in the evolution of closers:  all worthy explorations in December of 2024 as the left-hander faces his final turn on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot.  

There are 31 pitchers who compiled at least 300 saves in their career.  Among them, Wagner ranks fourth in strikeout percentage, fourth in hits per nine, fourth In K%-BB%, second in WHIP, and second in ERA+.  In the last category referenced, he’s behind Mariano Rivera (both Rivera and Wagner debuted in 1995).  In the first three, he trails those three rookies from 2010, Kimbrel, Chapman and Jansen. In WHIP, he’s number two to Jansen’s number one.  To consider his outsized link in another way, when he threw his last pitch in 2010, he was first in everything referenced except for ERA+, where he trailed Rivera – statistically, a go-to definition of what it meant to not just “save” a game, but to do it with such sudden and forceful exuberance.  If Rivera owned the smoothest, easiest-to-swing hinges on the door that closed out opponents, an action that was mystifying in its reliability and (almost) gentleness, Wagner possessed an explosive, demonstrative slam that mostly banged shut the opening, but could also threaten to blast back open now and again.  

In the 1980s, Goose Gossage seemed (to me, at least), the dictionary-definition picture of a shut-down force at the end of games – big and burly, menacing, Fu Manchu mustache glowering from the mound to evince a combative presence ready to initiate a dust-up.  Even his motion seemed wild, pieces breaking apart and then coming together and breaking apart as a pitch was unleashed.  Wagner suggested a break from that mold – clean-shaven, five inches shorter than Gossage, compact in motion, his missiles were upon a hitter in a blink, emerging, streaking from the launcher that was his left arm to a destination that was the catcher’s mitt.

When he retired, Wagner owned three of the five highest strikeout percentage seasons ever for a pitcher with at least 30 saves in a campaign (his number in 2010 is among the high five).  He owned more 30.0-K%, 30-save seasons than anyone else (seven – the next closest guy had four).  He owned as many 30-save, sub-one WHIP seasons as anyone except for Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.  He had tallied more saves than all but four others; he’s still eighth in saves and one of two lefties to reach 400.  When he retired, he had expanded the picture of what a closer could look like and what one could do.  He had expanded the definition of dominance, pushing the bar upward and setting a height ready to be challenged by his one-year teammate, Kimbrel, along with the others who got a glimpse of him at the end while they were just starting.  

Wagner’s campaign in 2010 might just be the greatest ever for a closer in his last Major League season.  There are 20 players ever with at least 20 saves in their last year (Wagner’s 37 are fourth most).  Among them, his 275 ERA+ is second best, his 1.43 ERA is the lowest, his WHIP and hits per nine are the lowest and his K% is the highest.  More than a decade after his stratospheric 1999 season alerted the game of an elevated level of transforming bats into toothpicks, he was still at it, offering one last reminder of the awesomeness of seeing a pitch buzz and zip and streak toward the plate with a sense of untouchability.  It was – it felt like at the time, in the subsequent years, and now – like a perfect handoff to the next generation of wildly potent relief aces.  Billy Wagner went out like he threw – with a bang.  

Last year, the southpaw fell five votes shy of election, a so-close finish that thrusts a lot of confidence into believing he’ll be elected in his 10th year of eligibility.  It’s taken some time, but it appears as if his last ballot-year will be like his final season, an exhilarating realization and stamp of Billy Wagner as one of the very best to do what he did, an immortal barometer to help judge and evaluate the next generations of closers. 

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.