This story was excerpted from AJ Cassavell’s Padres Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

In electing Wagner, the BBWAA has defined the modern-day closer as its own entity, with candidates’ credentials measured not against the whole of the body but against this specific peer group.

To gain entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Billy Wagner completed a climb few candidates have managed. Wagner, the former Houston Astros closer, attained the 75% support from voters required for election in his final year of eligibility on the writers’ ballot.

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Billy Wagner received 82.5 percent of the tally from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, after he missed by just five votes last year.

Other bits of intrigue ahead of Tuesday's 6 p.m. announcement: Will CC Sabathia be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and is this the year Billy Wagner gets in?

After falling five votes short of Baseball Hall of Fame last year, Billy Wagner is hopeful on his final year on ballot.

In his 10th and final year on the ballot, former Astros closer Billy Wagner earned is place in Cooperstown, N.Y. in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The BBWAA recognized CC Sabathia’s prolonged excellence by voting the former Yankees left-hander into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Miller School baseball coach Billy Wagner, known to the outside world as the best lefthanded closer in MLB history, is a Baseball Hall of Famer.

The trio of stars, each of whom spent part of their career in New York, will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 27.

Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese player chosen for baseball’s Hall of Fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous when he was elected Tuesday along with CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner.