Billy Wagner is deserving of Neyer's Wing of Amazing

I'm an avid reader of Rob Neyer's SweetSpot (and his writings in general), if you have not guessed it, and he recently came up with something pretty awesome, if not brilliant. Go figure. He only introduced the notion just over two weeks ago when he pondered that his fellow baseball writers might want to include Omar Vizquel in the Hall of Fame, when neither his statistics support his candidacy nor does he pass the "eyeball test:" the gut feeling factor. Not content to end the discussion at him simply not belonging, he supposed something else might do him justice. And this was all predicated on... well let me allow Rob to explain:

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"The dirty little secret is that there's no such thing as "the writers' wing" or "the broadcasters' wing" of the  Hall of Fame. Those places don't exist. If you've been to Cooperstown and weren't paying attention, you would have seen absolutely no proof that the winners of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award (writers) or the Ford C. Frick Award (broadcasters) ever existed, because their names simply don't appear in the Hall of Fame, which is a big room covered with the plaques depicting all the men (and one woman) who are actually, you know, in the Hall of Fame.

There's no wing. There are a couple of plaques, one for each award, hanging on a wall just outside the Hall's research library. The Spink and Frick Award winners are not "enshinees" (i.e. Hall of Famers) but rather "honorees," which is a completely different thing.

The confusion is partly the Hall of Fame's fault, because for some years the Hall of Fame has allowed the honorees to give an acceptance speech the same afternoon as the enshrinees give theirs.

But the confusion is mostly our fault, and by "our" I mean my colleagues in the business and our employers. Obviously, it makes everyone happy to add "Hall of Fame" in front of "writer" or "broadcaster." It's gratifying to the ego, and it's gratifying to whoever's signing the checks.

It's just not true.

The "wings" are largely imaginary places, invented for everyone's convenience.

So why not imagine one more wing, for our convenience?

What I am proposing is a Wing of the Amazing, for players who really don't belong in the Hall of Fame because they weren't good enough, but did some things that do deserve to be celebrated. A few criteria:

• No one-game wonders. This leaves out Don Larsen.
• No freak shows. This leaves out Eddie Gaedel and Minnie Minoso (though one can make a pretty decent case for Minoso as an actual Hall of Famer.
• We're not talking about really good (or great) players who belong in the Hall of Fame, but have been overlooked. Lou Whitaker and Bobby Grich were both fantastic players and they belong in the Hall, but when you look at their careers do you think, Amazing? Probably not.
• These standards are inviolable until someone convinces me they're not.

Now, it seems to me that while Omar Vizquel might not be the best candidate for the Wing of the Amazing, he is a fine candidate."
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Already off and running with his submittals, his second nominee was age-defying Jamie Moyer. And most recently, he argued Jim Abbott was the ideal candidate for the Wing of Amazing, of which I wholeheartedly agree.


It was his last nominee that not only propelled me from: "this is a good idea" to "I'm fully on board and engaged," but also got me to thinking. Now I'm not sure if Rob's open to others running with his idea, but something tells me he might be.  And so, what I happen to be thinking is that Billy Wagner should be another fantastic nominee for the (someday) venerable Wing of Amazing.

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Wagner was born in 1971 in western Virginia. At the age of just four, he had a gruesome fall and broke both his right arm and shoulder. Not even in kindergarten, and his baseball career was over. Or maybe not, here's the amazing part: instead, he simply taught himself to throw left handed. But he didn't stop at just being able to throw left handed.

He had an extremely unstable home life as a kid, moving from place to place in his childhood, and found himself moving in with his aunt and uncle at the age of 15. There was a cement building on the property and on its side was a painted strike zone. And with that wall, he blistered fastball after fastball with that left arm he’d remarkably turned into a baseball cannon.

In high school, he managed to strike out 19 batters in a game in which he faced 21. He was able to do this by pumping 85 with an extremely slight stature – he was 5’3” and 130 pounds. This made his ability to throw a baseball all the more remarkable, but it also deterred Division I colleges from recruiting him.

Billy extended his college career by heading to Division III school, Ferrum College. Over the summer, he grew six inches and gained 40 pounds. The result: he eventually started throwing mid-90’s fastballs, set the NCAA record by averaging 19.1 strikeouts per nine innings, and was drafted by the Houston Astros in the first round of the 1993 Rule IV draft, 12th overall. (H/T to JockBio.com)
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He had his first cup of coffee in the Big Leagues by 1995, and by 1996 he was there to stay; he was throwing fastballs that would make Walter Johnson blush. The rest is pretty much history.

If you go to baseball-reference.com and check out the career leader boards for pitchers, set at a minimum of 1,000 innings, you won’t find him. But that’s because he pitched 903 innings. 97 more innings and his 11.9 strikeouts per nine would top the list, nearly one and a half more strikeouts per nine innings than Randy Johnson – though it should be pointed out as a relief pitcher. That would also be ahead of Trevor Hoffman (9.36) and Mariano Rivera (8.23). His strikeout per walk ratio of 3.99 would put him fourth, ahead of Rivera. And his WHIP bested Rivera too at .998, good for third on the list. And if you’re into counting statistics, his 422 saves isn’t too shabby.

Many people may consider Billy Wagner a Hall of Famer, but I'm just not so sure. I know that the writers have not yet figured out how and who they want to peg, reliever-wise, as Cooperstown worthy. I worry that they never will, especially considering they still don't know what to make of a base on balls.

His 29.7 career Wins Above Replacement as a reliever is elite, but any other position requires around 60 career wins to get into the conversation. We need to lower that, though, given the fact that Rivera now sits at 52.9 career WAR after his 2010 season, and he's a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But to what? 50? 40? 30? I don't know.

But what I do know is that a young boy who is born right handed, breaks his arm, learns to throw lefty given the injury, only grows to 5'9" and yet still manages an average fastball of over 96 miles per hour -- from 2002 on, as available from Fangraphs -- with incredible control and consistency, is amazing.

This blog post was linked to on the ESPN.com, SweetSpot blog by Rob Neyer on Friday Filberts and again: Bo Knows Amazing.