Wagner anxiously awaits HOF call: 'This is it'

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HOUSTON -- Entering a close game in the ninth inning and needing three outs to get a save is a situation closer Billy Wagner found himself in many times. The pressure of those outings pales in comparison to the nerves Wagner has dealt with in the days leading up to the announcement of the 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame class.

Wagner is in his 10th and final year on the Hall of Fame ballot after falling five votes shy of election last year. If Wagner, who appeared on 73.8 percent of ballots by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in 2024, doesn’t get 75 percent of the vote when results are released Tuesday, he will have to hope to appear on an Era Committee ballot in the future.

“I think it’s more hectic and nerve-wracking this year because this is it,” Wagner said.

Exclusive coverage of the 2025 BBWAA Hall of Fame announcement will begin at 3 p.m. CT Tuesday on MLB Network, leading up to the results being revealed at 5 p.m. Along with MLB Network carrying the announcement, MLB.com, MLB.TV and the MLB App will join the coverage at 5 p.m.

Wagner started his bid with just 10.5 percent of the vote in his debut in 2016, but he’s made sizable jumps in each of his past five years on the ballot. He jumped 15 percent to 31.7 percent in 2020, then improved to 46.4 percent in ’21, 51 percent in ’22, 68.1 percent in ’23 and 73.8 percent in ’24.

Wagner, who lives and coaches in high school baseball in Charlottesville, Va., said he’ll have some friends at his house Tuesday and go out to dinner in the evening.

“They’re going to try to keep my mind off it,” he said. “We’re going to check the ticker about 500 million times and that fun stuff.”

Wagner’s case is a strong one. The flamethrower saved 422 career games -- the second most by a left-hander in AL/NL history -- and posted a career 2.31 ERA in 903 innings, the second-lowest ERA in the Modern Era (since 1900) for a pitcher with at least 900 innings. His 11.92 strikeouts per nine innings and .187 opponents’ batting average are the best career totals of any pitcher in AL/NL history with at least 900 innings.

A first-round pick out of Ferrum College in the 1993 MLB Draft, Wagner came up through the Astros' system as a starting pitcher before making the transition to reliever following a callup to Houston in 1995. He saved a club-record 225 games in his nine years with the Astros (1995-03), making three All-Star teams and finishing fourth in the 1999 National League Cy Young Award voting.

Wagner said reaching the Hall of Fame would have impacts beyond his personal legacy.

“Nobody from southwest Virginia [is in the Hall of Fame], and I don’t think there’s a Division III baseball player that’s been elected to the Hall of Fame,” he said. “There’s something to what’s going on. There’s some volume to this. I don’t know if people have thought about it in that way.”

“They seem to be fine because they don’t talk to me about it at all, which is good,” Wagner said about his family. “They know how stressing this is, and they keep an eye on out. What keeps me busy is my practices and things like that. That’s been a Godsend for me. I definitely check the ticker a whole lot more now than I did in the past.”

Wagner appears to have more than enough support to reach the Hall of Fame in ballots that have been public so far, but that’s only a fraction of the total. It will come down to the wire on Tuesday, with Wagner hoping for one last save.

“It looks good right now, but you never know,” he said. “Hopefully I get lucky.”