Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Closers, 2025 Edition

Before we get too far into the regular season, I’m going to add one more special edition update to this year’s Future Hall of Fame Series. However, if you missed the first few pieces in this series, you can start catching up on the Hitters here, and the Starting Pitchers here.

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As I’ve said in the past, I don’t think it’s usually worth it to update my Future Hall of Fame predictions for closers every single season, in the way that I do for starters or position players. However, Billy Wagner’s induction this year seemed like a good excuse to revisit the topic; Wagner marks only the ninth closer in Cooperstown, and with such a small sample to build our Hall standards, I figured it was worth checking to see if things had shifted at all.

It also helps that I think Wagner will probably be the last closer added to the Hall of Fame for at least the foreseeable future. Now that he’s off the ballot, who’s the best reliever who isn’t already elected? Finding “the best X who isn’t already in” is usually a good way to determine a candidate who might start attracting new voters and building momentum for their case.

In fact, that’s actually what happened with Wagner himself; his first big jump in Hall polling came in 2020, which just so happened to come immediately on the heels of Trevor Hoffman, Mariano Rivera, and Lee Smith all being elected between 2018 and 2019. With all of those three out of the way, Wagner gained a few favorable comps in Cooperstown (mostly Smith and Hoffman), but perhaps more importantly, there was no obvious player that would make anyone say “Why should we put Wagner in the Hall if [this guy] isn’t in?”

So with Wagner no longer eligible, who takes up the mantle of “Best Closer Who Isn’t in the Hall of Fame”? It’s not totally clear, and any uncertainty in that answer is going to split momentum in a way that wouldn’t happen if there was a single obvious choice. But just about every potential choice has an additional big asterisk standing in their way on top of that.

Is Billy Wagner the Best Closer Not in the Hall of Fame? Is 2020 a Turning Point for His Hall Case?

[As usual, this is also up over at The Crawfish Boxes.]



Hall of Fame voting continues on throughout the holidays, and so does our coverage of this year’s ballot. Last time, we covered Jeff Kent, a two-year veteran of the mid-2000s Astros who may finally have a change to break through the ballot backlog in his seventh time around. This time, we’ll be covering a longer-tenured Houston star with a similar chance to see his vote total rise, but two years ahead of Kent’s timetable.

Of course, there’s another big reason to be more excited for Billy Wagner’s chances this winter, and that’s who has been elected over the last two years. Specifically, Trevor Hoffman was elected to the Hall on his third ballot back in 2018, while Mariano Rivera went in unanimously on his first ballot last year while Lee Smith joined him on the stage after his first year on the Veterans Committee ballot.

That means that there are now eight closers in Cooperstown, an even more rapid expansion than when three were added between 2004 and 2008 (Dennis Eckersley, Bruce Sutter, and Rich Gossage). With Rivera, Hoffman, and Smith out of the way, Wagner now sits alone as the clear best closer on the Hall of Fame ballot, with the only other options this year being likely one-and-done candidates José Valverde, J.J. Putz, and Heath Bell. Traditionally, being the best at a certain role has helped candidates pick up votes more quickly, which is a good sign for Billy going forward.

Of course, not only is he the best on the ballot this year, but there aren’t really many challengers to that title coming up over the next two years: next year will add Rafael Soriano and Kevin Gregg (among others), while the year after that will add Joe Nathan and Jonathan Papelbon, who are at least both more interesting than Valverde or Soriano, but still not on Wagner’s level. Which lead me to a bigger question: is Billy Wagner now the best closer not in the Hall of Fame?

Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Closers

I recently ran my annual look at which hitters and starting pitchers are on pace for the Hall of Fame, and in them, I mentioned the idea of switching things up and looking at relief pitchers as well. After all, there’s been something of an explosion in relief talent in Cooperstown over the last two years; after being stuck at five closers in the Hall for a decade, we’ve seen three new ones added in Mariano Rivera, Lee Smith, and Trevor Hoffman. Plus, Billy Wagner continues to hang around the ballot, and may see his support continue to climb in the coming years.

Now obviously, eight closers still isn’t anywhere near the body of evidence we have to work with when trying to predict position players or starters, but it might be fun to play around with, and see if we can spot any sort of nascent trends in who the Hall is electing.

It’s not a lot to work with, but there are some fun things I noticed while looking into things:

Who Will Be the Last Active Player from the 1990s?

The offseason is the time for indulging in strange, off-the-wall investigations. And so, I will take this opportunity to explore a question that occurred to me during the regular season: who will be the last active player who debuted in the 1990s?

I really wish I remember what inspired this question, but the context is lost to the sands of time, as all the remains is a note on my “To Do” list that says “WHO WILL BE THE LAST PLAYER FROM THE ‘90s?” Apparently, I was really excited about it when it occurred to me, and that’s all that really matters.

With that, I headed to Baseball-Reference’s Play Index to find out who all was left from the ‘90s. The details of my search were pretty simple: sort by ascending year of debut, active players with last season 2013 or later. I thought about setting final season to 2014 or later, but I figured there might be a few cases of players who were active in 2014 but couldn’t play due to, say, injury, or steroid suspension.

With those criteria set, I got a list of 30 players who fit the criteria. However, I had to cull the list even more, as some of the results were no longer possibilities. Derek Jeter, Paul Konerko, Bobby Abreu, Eric Chavez, Ryan Dempster, and Alfonso Soriano have all announced their retirements. I suppose comeback tours are all possible, but I don’t know that we should be betting on them happening. That leaves us with 24 names.