I didn’t vote for Billy Wagner. But although I don’t view Wagner as a Hall of Famer, I must admit I’m slightly relieved (no pun intended) that he didn’t fall short of the Hall by a single vote — mine.
Wagner received 73.8 percent of the votes, and voting trends suggest he’ll be a shoo-in for the needed 75 percent next year, his final year on the ballot. That’s OK by me. He was five votes short, and I’m sure he’ll get them from someone next year.
I can certainly see Wagner’s Cooperstown case. His rate stats — his .187 batting average against, his 33.2 strikeout percentage — in some cases are off the charts. In other cases, they fall second only to Mariano Rivera.
Wagner obviously is a baseball great, one of the top 10 relievers ever. The question is whether he ranks in the top 1.18 percent of players who ever played (that’s the percentage of MLB players who make it to Cooperstown). In my view the answer is no.
I’m not against relievers by definition (I voted for Rivera, Goose Gossage and Trevor Hoffman), but there’s a reason Wagner has a lifetime WAR of 27.7, or less than half that of Mark Buehrle, Bobby Abreu and others I didn’t vote for. There’s also reason a top reliever can get $100 million and a top starter $300 million.
I’m not anti-reliever, I’m pro-starter. I’m obviously in the vast minority but I think Buehrle, for example, who had a perfect game, a no-hitter and in 15 straight seasons won double-digit games and threw 198-plus innings, had greater impact and thus an even better Hall case. And he got 8.3 percent of votes!
Wagner comes pretty close, but a specialist’s case would look better if the counting stats ranked higher on the all-time list (he’ll be eighth in saves once Crag Kimbrel and Kenley Jansen pass him next year). Or certainly if his biggest moments weren’t often memorably bad moments. I know it’s only 14 postseason games and 11 ¹/₃ innings, but he gave up 21 hits and 13 earned runs. In October, he was sometimes the anti-Rivera.
If Wagner is in, Kimbrel is in, too. While Kimbrel is comparable in saves (417 to Wagner’s 422) ERA (2.40 to 2.31) and WHIP (0.990 to 0.998), he’s better in strikeouts per nine innings (14.2 to 11.9) and he’s only half as bad in the postseason (4.50 ERA to 10.03 ERA).
Wagner received about 10 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot, and almost two-thirds of the electorate obviously changed its mind. Call me stubborn but I’m not apt to change my view based on the opinions of others (just like I don’t expect to convince anyone today).
I’ve been openly critical of our recent voting, mostly because we keep changing our votes while the careers of retired players don’t change. Despite our obvious tendency to be equally wishy and washy, I think we did OK this time.
New Hall of Famers Adrian Beltre and Joe Mauer rightfully deserved election (they were two of the six I voted for, the other four are mentioned below), and while I didn’t vote for Todd Helton, I certainly see the fine case of a hitter with a career .953 OPS.
I would have preferred to see the others I voted for — Andruw Jones (61.6 percent), Carlos Beltran (57.1 percent), Chase Utley (26.8 percent) and Jimmy Rollins (14.8 percent) — get in. But I think the time will come for at least Jones, Beltran and Utley.
Beltran I left off the ballot last year for the 2017 trash-can embarrassment but vowed to support him going forward. I’m a little surprised he didn’t do even better since he was a five-tool player who dominated Octobers.
But I won’t quibble. I think we pretty much aced it.
I don’t root against anyone, but I didn’t get why Gary Sheffield was receiving exactly 75 percent of the vote in public ballots beyond that it was becoming an increasingly popular candidacy and I see it as justice that he wound up falling short with 63.9 percent. Those fun stories about how scary it is to play third with him batting conjured one word — steroids!
It still makes no sense to me that Sheffield, a proven steroid guy, should be shooting up the voting ranks while other steroid guys who were even better players such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez stagnate in balloting. For whatever reason, Sheffield is convincing in the way he falsely denies his steroid involvement.
He got nearly twice the support of A-Rod (34 percent), which I’ll never get. Either you were caught or not, and he was caught. He reportedly mailed cash to steroid dispenser Victor Conte, was caught in BALCO and made the Mitchell Report. I’m not sure what more evidence anyone needs to see.
Anyway, cheers to us for voting in an outstanding class of three. And when Wagner makes it to Cooperstown next year, maybe I, too, will change my mind. I doubt it, but I will still applaud a very fine career.