Wagner’s tenth attempt at running for office yielded 73.8% of the vote.

Billy Wagner was not elected on his ninth go at the ballot in the BBWAA vote for the 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame class, as the results were made public on Tuesday night. With 73.8% of the vote, he will be comfortably within striking distance when he faces the ballot for the tenth and last time next winter. I have some excellent news for the fireballing lefty (yeah, I presume he can still throw the ball hard), who was only five votes away from induction this time around.

Wagner has a very excellent chance of being inducted. First off, Wagner benefits from basic logistics. This year’s inductees included Adrián Beltré, Joe Mauer, and Todd Helton. Gary Sheffield was eliminated because he was unable to reach 75% in his tenth season. Ichiro Suzuki and perhaps CC Sabathia are sure things for next year, but that leaves four formidable contenders off the list. That is beneficial.

Candidates have historically benefited from a final-year boost. While it doesn’t occur every time, it does occur frequently. Even though Sheffield failed, we were able to see it. Larry Walker made his final attempt, jumping over 20 percentage points to get in. Wagner, though, needs to win only a small number of people because he is only 1.2 percentage points behind.

Wagner also has the benefit of history. Unless there are extraordinary circumstances, once a candidate gets this close, he virtually always makes it. Following the adoption of an annual voting process in 1966 (before to which the votes were split between the BBWAA and the veterans committee), these players are the ones who have received more than 70% of the vote while still eligible to be inducted the following year.

Player Year Vote % Year on ballot % the following year
Joe Medwick 1967 72.6 8th 84.8
Roy Campanella 1968 72.4 4th 79.4
Robin Roberts 1975 72.7 3rd 86.9
Duke Snider 1979 71.3 10th 86.5
Juan Marichal 1982 73.5 2nd 83.7
Harmon Killebrew 1983 71.9 3rd 83.1
Hoyt Wilhelm 1984 72 7th 83.8
Billy Williams 1986 74.1 5th 85.7
Gaylord Perry 1990 72.1 2nd 77.2
Don Sutton 1997 73.2 4th 81.6
Gary Carter 2002 72.7 5th 78
Goose Gossage 2007 71.2 8th 85.8
Jim Rice 2008 72.2 14th 76.4
Bert Blyleven 2010 74.2 13th 79.7
Roberto Alomar 2010 73.7 1st 90
Craig Biggio 2014 74.8 2nd 82.7
Jeff Bagwell 2016 71.6 6th 86.2
Trevor Hoffman 2017 74 2nd 79.9
Vladimir Guerrero 2017 71.7 1st 92.9
Edgar Martínez 2018 70.4 9th 85.4
Todd Helton 2023 72.2 5th 79.7

Be aware that while some near-misses occurred, many others did not. The only other person who was going into his senior year and just about made the cut was Rice. Martínez was the most recent player to fly in for his final-chance vote. The other relievers on the list beside Wagner, Gossage, and Hoffman, made it with ease. Pay attention to Helton’s easy lead to qualify this year. This list of Billy Wagner’s accomplishments is quite impressive.

Naturally, this isn’t the complete list of players who still have eligibility to get between 70–75%.

Two pitchers who were not selected to Cooperstown are not included in the above list. Yes, just two players in history have failed to make the Hall of Fame based on the BBWAA ballot and have landed between 70 and 75% of eligible votes left.

In 1987, Jim Bunning received 70% of the vote in his eleventh year on the ballot (the 10-year term on the ballot was a recent addition, affecting the 2015 election). With a 74.2% the next year, he was undoubtedly primed to pop the bubbly. Rather, he fell to 63.3%, then 57.9%, and then he rose to 63.7% in his last year, 1991. However, the Veteran’s Committee chose him to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996.

Curt Schilling is now the first man in history to reach 70% of the BBWAA vote while still being eligible and not win. In 2020, his ninth year on the ballot, he received precisely 70% of the vote. He subsequently achieved 71.1% in 2021 and proceeded to undermine his case. Shortly after those findings, he recorded a Facebook live video in which he made disparaging remarks about baseball writers in general and “the media” in particular, and he announced that he would like to be removed from the Hall of Fame vote.

He accomplished this by posting the entire thing online after claiming that the letter was “for their eyes only.” After the Hall of Fame rejected his plea, Schilling requested the writers to abstain from voting for him. His vote percentage dropped to 58.6 in his tenth and last year on the ballot, so a respectable number obliged.

Out of the players whose eligibility is still on the ballot, twenty-three have crossed the 70% mark but are still short of 75. Twenty-one of those were put to the ballot the next year. Bunning did not, but he entered later. Schilling purposely set fire to his candidature. This would fall under the category of the “extreme circumstance” that I already discussed, and Wagner probably wouldn’t pull off anything even somewhat similar.

In the end, though, the likelihood is strong that next year will be a celebration of one of baseball’s best all-time closers, even though this was undoubtedly a disheartening revelation for Wagner and his admirers.

Once more, history is in his favour. Jeff Bagwell is also this:

“There’s nobody better or as dominant as Billy Wagner was, as far as I’m sitting,” the Astros Hall of Famer said to MLB.com.