Former Phillies closer Billy Wagner elected to Hall of Fame, joining Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia

Wagner was elected in his 10th and final year on the ballot with 82.5% of the vote. Chase Utley climbed to 39.8% in his second year.

Billy Wagner had 422 saves in his 16-year career, including 59 with the Phillies.Read moreGENE J. PUSKAR / ASSOCIATED PRESS

by Scott Lauber

Published Jan. 21, 2025, 6:51 p.m. ET

Once more, for baseball immortality, Billy Wagner closed it out.

Wagner, the dominant closer who played a two-season sliver of his 16-year career with the Phillies, got elected Tuesday night to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his 10th and final year on the ballot. He will be joined in the Class of 2025 by all-time hit king Ichiro Suzuki and lefty workhorse CC Sabathia, both first-time candidates.

Suzuki, the first player born in Japan to make it to the Hall of Fame, was a landslide choice, as expected, appearing on all but one of 394 ballots cast by long-standing members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Sabathia received 86.8% of the votes, while Wagner came in with 82.5%. A three-quarter majority is required for election.

“I felt like the clock stopped,” said Wagner, who cried upon getting the phone call from Cooperstown a few minutes before the results were broadcast live on MLB Network. “There was many times throughout this day that the emotions were running high. From about 2 o’clock until about 5:15, it got really slow. It was very difficult to control things.”

Suzuki, Sabathia, and Wagner will be inducted — with late former Phillies slugger Dick Allen and Dave Parker, who got voted in last month by a Hall of Fame special committee — on July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Wagner, who wore an Astros polo shirt on a Zoom call with reporters, is expected to put Houston’s cap on his plaque. But he was among four former Phillies on the ballot. Chase Utley, a second-year candidate, climbed to 39.8% of the vote after getting 28.8% last year. Bobby Abreu and Jimmy Rollins made more modest gains to 19.5% and 18%, respectively, in their sixth and fourth go-rounds.

Utley, Rollins, and Abreu will be up for consideration again next year, with former Phillies ace Cole Hamels poised to be added to the ballot.

The ultimate baseball honor was 10 years in the making for Wagner, who recently described the highs and lows of the drawn-out process as a “nightmare.” He debuted on the ballot in 2016 and received only 10.5% support, but leaped to 31.7% in 2020 and 68.1% in 2023.

Then came last year. Wagner was coaching his high school baseball team at the Miller School of Albemarle in Charlottesville, Va., when an NBC camera crew showed up to capture his reaction when the Hall of Fame results were announced live on MLB Network in anticipation that he would finally get over the 75% mark.

Instead, Wagner fell five votes short.

“It’s not been an easy 10 years to sit here and swallow a lot of the things that you have to swallow,” Wagner said. “The only thing that I felt that I did well was I didn’t blow a save for 10 years. … Anybody that knows me well know I’m very impatient.”

Wagner, 53, kept a lower profile for his Hall of Fame cliff-hanger, watching the results with only his wife and close family. Through Monday, he was trending at nearly 85% with roughly half of the voters having revealed their ballots, according to Ryan Thibodeaux’s tracking data. But he wasn’t about to get overconfident, either.

And when the moment finally arrived, emotion overcame him.

“My kids on my baseball team make fun of me all the time about crying with emotion, but the game has given me so much,” Wagner said. “It’s given me everything that I could possibly have. I’m very grateful.”

The case for Wagner was compelling. Never mind the unlikely story of learning to pitch left-handed after twice breaking his right arm and getting drafted out of Division III Ferrum College in Virginia. Since 1920, he leads all pitchers in opponent batting average (.187) and strikeout rate (33.2%), making him effectively the most difficult pitcher to hit.

Wagner also ranks second in WHIP (0.994) and opponent OPS (.558) and has the eighth-most saves (422), trailing three Hall of Famers (Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, and Lee Smith), one pitcher who is on the ballot (Francisco Rodríguez), two active relievers (Kenley Jansen and Craig Kimbrel), and former closer John Franco.

But some writers withheld their vote, citing mostly Wagner’s 10.03 ERA in eight postseason series. Wagner also pitched only 903 innings, less than contemporary Hall of Fame closers such as Rivera (1,283⅔) and Hoffman (1,089⅓).

Other voters tended simply to be biased against closers.

Wagner was at the peak of his powers in two seasons with the Phillies. Acquired in a November 2003 trade with the Astros for pitchers Brandon Duckworth, Taylor Buchholz, and Ezequiel Astacio, he posted a 1.86 ERA, 59 saves, and 146 strikeouts in 126 innings in 2004 and ‘05.

But the Phillies narrowly missed the playoffs both years, and Wagner was critical of teammates and management. He blew a save down the stretch against the Astros in 2005, and the Phillies finished one game behind Houston in the wild-card race.

Wagner signed with the rival Mets as a free agent and spent 3½ seasons in New York before getting traded to the Red Sox in August 2009 and finishing his career with the Braves in 2010. He will be the ninth pitcher inducted to the Hall of Fame as primarily a reliever, joining Rivera, Hoffman, Smith, Dennis Eckersley, Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, and Rich Gossage.

Suzuki, 51, came to MLB for the 2001 season as a 27-year-old after a distinguished career in Japan and made an immediate impact. He won the batting title (.350), stolen-base crown (56), Rookie of the Year, and was named MVP in his first season and led the Mariners to 116 victories. In 2004, he set a single-season record with 262 hits. He had 10 seasons in a row with at least 200 hits.

And he was identifiable by one name: Ichiro, making him the Prince or Madonna of baseball.

Here’s the list of players with 3,000 career hits and 500 steals: Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Lou Brock, Rickey Henderson, Paul Molitor, and Ichiro. Add in his nine seasons in Japan, and Ichiro piled up 4,367 hits (111 more than MLB leader Pete Rose) and 708 steals.

The question, then, was less about Ichiro’s worthiness as a first-ballot Hall of Famer than whether he would join Rivera as the only unanimous selections. Like Derek Jeter in 2020, he fell short of that distinction by a single vote on a ballot that hasn’t been publicly revealed.

Only five years removed from his last game, Sabathia is a dinosaur, a starting pitcher who, at his peak, racked up 230-plus-inning seasons and complete games, often pitching on short rest when the stakes were highest.

Sabathia, 44, finished with 251 wins and 3,093 strikeouts. He won the Cy Young Award in 2007 and had five consecutive top-five finishes in the voting, and pushed the Yankees to their last World Series championship in 2009.

But Sabathia was never better than in 2008. After a midseason trade to the Brewers, with free agency (and a then-record contract) looming after the season, he completed seven of 17 starts, won 11 of 13 decisions, posted a 1.65 ERA, and made his final three regular-season starts on three days’ rest to carry Milwaukee into the playoffs.

There was one near miss in this voting cycle: center fielder Carlos Beltrán.

Beltrán, 47, might have already gotten elected if not for his role as a ringleader of the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scandal. But the writers appear to be softening. Beltrán’s total rose to 70.3%, up from 57.1% last year and 46.5% in 2023. He stands an excellent chance of climbing over 75% next year.

Curt Schilling is the only candidate ever to get to the 70% mark and not get in.

Fellow center fielder Andruw Jones has more work to do. In his eighth time on the ballot, Jones came in at 66.2%, a small increase from 61.6% last year.