Long-time MLB closer Billy Wagner was finally inducted into the Hall of Fame on Tuesday.
In his tenth and final year of hall of fame eligibility, Wagner received 82.5% of votes cast by baseball writers, comfortably above the required 75% threshold.
Wagner also becomes the first left-handed reliever in league history to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
“Everything I do has been a blessing,” Wagner said to SNY. “To look back and see that I’m the first left-handed reliever, the first Division III [college player], the first guy from the state of Virginia in the Hall of Fame as a baseball player, those things that are meaningful.”
The southpaw has yet to declare what team he will enter the Hall of Fame with, having spent significant portions of his career with the Houston Astros and the New York Mets.
Wagner, who spent four seasons with the Mets during his 16-year career, said that he enjoyed his time playing in New York, per SNY.
Despite the concept of closers in the MLB dating back to the 1950s, Wagner marks just the ninth of his kind to reach the Hall of Fame.
Wagner, who retired from the game early to spend more time with his children, finished with 422 career saves, eighth most in MLB history.
Since the inception of the closing pitcher, there has been discourse around the MLB arguing that their careers often go undervalued.
“People now have a good chance to really look into the numbers,” Wagner said to SNY. “The writers can see how important closers are in the long run in the nature of today’s game.”
Out of the nine closers, only five have been inducted through the traditional voting process, with the remaining being chosen through committees decades after their retirement.
Closers, who typically pitch in the later innings of games, have one task: secure the win for their respective ballclub.
When done successfully, these players are often lauded by both the team and its fans; when not, however, the consequences can run the player out of town.
However, many argue that since closers usually pitch just 1-2 innings per outing, they fail to accumulate enough total stats to match up with starting pitchers, who typically throw for longer.
Considering Wagner’s sharp rise in votes cast, along with being the third closer to be given the Hall-of-Fame nod in just six years (Mariano Rivera and Lee Smith in 2019), it appears that the tides might be shifting in regards to how MLB evaluates the careers of closing pitchers.