Former Houston Astros reliever Billy Wagner is headed to Cooperstown. Wagner managed to make the Hall of Fame on his 10th and final ballot, garnering 82.5 percent of the vote. He joins Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia in the MLB Hall of Fame class of 2025.
It took a decade for the former strikeout artist to get voted into the HOF. A tearful Wagner contemplated the incredible achievement on Tuesday. “Ten years of having somebody tell me I shouldn’t be in it, so to make it, I’m just thinking of my high school coaches, all the guys that I came up with and things like that,” Wagner said via Jose de Jesus Ortiz.
Looking back on his 16-year career, Wagner found it difficult to articulate what making the Hall of Fame means to him. “It’s just really hard to put into words. I don’t know how you even expect anything like this when you come from Southwest Virginia,” he explained per Our Esquina on X.
Wagner was selected by the Houston Astros with the 12th overall pick in the 1993 draft. He spent the first nine seasons of his career with the Astros, racking up 225 saves and 694 strikeouts in 504.1 innings pitched for Houston.
Former Astros closer Billy Wagner finally made the HOF

The hard-throwing lefty would go on to pitch for the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Mets, the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves before retiring following the 2010 season. Wagner finished his career with 422 saves, good for eighth-best in baseball history. He compiled 1,196 strikeouts in 903 innings pitched, giving him a career K/9 of 11.9 along with a remarkable strikeout percentage of 33.2.
Wagner also boasted a career 2.31 ERA, 0.998 WHIP and ERA+ of 187 . He was a seven-time All-Star, representing the Astros three times, and he won Reliever of the Year in 1999. Still, it took 10 tries for him to reach the Hall of Fame.
Wagner came painfully close to Cooperstown last year. Players must receive at least 75 percent of the vote to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. In 2024, Wagner was snubbed yet again, garnering 73.8 percent of the vote and falling just five votes shy of making the HOF.
Finally, in his 10th and final year of eligibility, Wagner crossed the threshold, reaching 82.5 percent as 325 votes were cast for the pitcher. The other two players elected to the Hall of Fame in 2025, Ichiro and Sabathia, both made it on their first try.
Ichiro became the first-ever Japanese-born player to make the HOF. And he nearly became just the second player to be unanimously elected to Cooperstown. Ichiro fell one vote shy of joining Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous inductees. Instead, he tallied 99.7 percent of the vote.