Why does this number matter? Because all but two retired men (Pete Rose, Rafael Palmeiro) ahead of Vizquel are currently in the Hall of Fame. Craig Biggio and Derek Jeter are also ahead of him, but they will both be elected to the Hall in their first opportunities. And whenever Vizquel retires, he should be too.
His career fielding percentage is .985, the second-highest ever by a shortstop. The only man ahead of Vizquel is current Colorado Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki.
Most would associate the greatest fielding shortstop to be Ozzie Smith. His career fielding percentage is seven points below Vizquel’s, in Smith’s 24 big-league seasons, he only committed a single-digit number of errors four times. Vizquel has done that 13 times.
Outside of his 11 Gold Gloves—he won two more with the Giants in 2005 and 2006—Vizquel has showcased his speed on the basepaths. He’s swiped 404 bases in his career, and while that number only gets him to No. 70 on that career-list, it’s been his utility and overall effectiveness that should make him a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
...He’s been a class act throughout his career, a big plus when it comes time for the BBWAA to vote. Vizquel has stayed away from the steriod era scandals, another big perk when it becomes his first time on the ballot. If Vizquel calls it quits after 2012, or stays in the big leagues until he reaches 3,000 hits, he should be in the Hall of Fame on his first try.
Repoz
Posted: September 22, 2012 at 10:27 PM |
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1. Robert in Manhattan Beach Posted: September 22, 2012 at 10:51 PM (#4243367)This guy cashed a check after turning this article in. There is no justice.
Omar may deserve to make the Hall, but not for the reasons given.
Agree.
But I also can't come up with a good reason why a Hall of Fame that includes Jim Rice and Jack Morris shouldn't include Jerry Koosman, too.
DB
Nobody feared Omar, and he wasn't much of a winner in the postseason, either.
Well, Rice won an MVP. And Vizquel did stupid stuff like putting in a strong effort to field grounders even when his team was ahead by 6 runs rather than fielding to the score.
easily surpassing "The Wizard," who has 12.
Ozzie has 13.
People feared him so much that Davey Johnson choked away an ALCS on Omar's missed suicide squeeze.
Jack Morris does not sleep. He waits.
All three played on two pennant winners apiece, but the salient difference is that Maranville and Aparicio were often considered crucial to their teams' success. "Award Shares" are a blunt instrument, but Aparicio has 1.24 and Maranville 2.13. Vizquel has 0.01, thanks to what looks like one voter putting him way down one ballot in one year.
Who knows if Aparicio and Maranville really were that important to winning. Voters may well have overrated them. But it's hard to claim that voters underrated Vizquel. When his teams went to the Series, they featured Belle, Lofton, Hershiser, Ramirez, Thome, and a cast of thousands. He was always about the fifth-biggest star at best, on teams that will end up having one prime HOFer (Thome).
How about "three wrongs don't make two rights"?
Vizquel fielded to the score
1) You want to compare fielding percentages without making any time adjustments, even though anyone can see that F% has risen steadily over time?
2) You want to compare two shortstop defenses using only F% as your criteria, with a casual mention of Gold Gloves, as if that's been reliable at shortstop recently?
3) In a desperate effort to find some offensive value in Vizquel, you cite only stolen bases?
4) You play the steroid card, since Omar has never been caught, even though his very long career is one of the big symptoms that steroid puritans use as a weapon.
On top of all that, I checked Win Shares (the book), which gives defensive grades to players. Since Win Shares is an old book, it only contains the first several years of Omar's career - the first several, which means, almost certainly, the best several. Defense is, after all, a young man's game. Omar's grade as a young shortstop was B-. That's a terrible grade for an early career for a glove specialist. It's close to Ernie Banks and Arky Vaughn, who were not glove specialists, but were apparently a bit better than Omar anyway, and, of course, outhit him by tons. People like Ozzie Smith, Honus Wagner, Marty Marion, and Rabbit Maranville have grades, for their entire careers, of A or A+. Omar Vizquel has an ordinary ability at shortstop, but not much more.
In short, Omar Vizquel has no business in the Hall, much less on the first ballot. And the author of this article should not be allowed to write about baseball any more. He apparently knows approximately nothing. - Brock Hanke
In which category is Barry Bonds? Using dumb arguments is one thing. Getting simple facts wrong is another.
His argument (or lack thereof) is similar to Johnny Damon's.
Mike Trout
The next year they will inaugurate Jesse Barfield for best outfield arm and Glenn Hubbard for best job of setting up as the cutoff man and Phil Nevin for best job fielding bunts.
Poor Keith can't even get in that way.
Narratively speaking, Curt Flood is usually on the short list. Tris Speaker also has a pretty sterling reputation.
And Mariano Rivera for being the best 1-inning relief-pitcher
*ducks* :)
So, I'd say that it really does come down to Speaker and Mays, unless your system sees so much value in Flood's existing career that no reasonable 5-year decline would drag him down to earth. I have no way of comparing Speaker, in the dead ball era, to Mays, in the 50s and 60s, that generates any real separation between the two. Besides, there is that large factor of time period. Speaker was famous for playing very shallow and running things down that went over his head. I don't know that I'd want to try that in any of those 1960s giant Astroturf parks, like Busch Stadium and Three Rivers, where there is a lot of territory in back of a shallow CF. So, if you made me vote for just one, I'd probably pick Willie, unless you're talking peaks and primes only, in which case Flood is probably the man, depending on just how many Jones years you want to consider in your definition of "prime" and "peak." I have no adequate way to deal with 19th-century players or Negro Leaguers. The early game had a very high rate of change in ballparks, rules and equipment, so even trying to figure out who was the best over a three-year period is very hard. One guy is better under one set of rules; another guy is better two years later, because the rules changed or there were better gloves or something. I also have found no reputation consensus among 19-century observers. You would think that if the period had produced a Speaker or Mays, he have a giant rep. The best rep is probably for Jimmy McAleer (sp?). Negro leaguers have no statistical record that has enough detail to be reliable for CF defense, and reputation is split between at least Oscar Charleston and Cool Papa Bell.
That's the best I can do. - Brock
BTW, after I wrote the above post, I did a quick check for 1800s CFs, because McAleer was from the 1890s, and there might be contenders from earlier. There are really, only two earlier candidates who combine A+ math grades and first-rate reputations. One is George Gore, the other is Curt Welch (of the $10,000 slide). If you're trying, for some reason, to figure out gloves in the 19th century, those two and McAleer are your prime suspects. Paul Hines might come up, too. He has a lower math grade (A-), but he also played longer than Gore and Welch, so there's more decline phase in there. Hines did have a top glove rep. One of those three is almost certainly the best CF before McAleer. - Brock
Yeah, well, I've never made a SINGLE error in the bigs. Maybe I should be the first-balloter.
The best CF I ever saw is a guy I still see every time I go to the Ballpark, Rangers first-base coach Gary Pettis. He had miraculous range. I don't think his arm was truly superior, though, and while we mostly marvel at center fielders for their range, a good arm is part of the package. Humphreys ranks Pettis fifth all-time, behind Jones, Mays, Speaker, and Blair.
Staff that gave up a lot of fly balls, and Ashburn taking lots of discretionary chances, would be the best guess. It doesn't seem likely that there could be other explanations. Ashburn was fast, and a very good fielder, but as you say, nobody's that much faster and better than Willie Mays. James addresses the question in the Win Shares book in more detail as part of the "Hamner/Ashburn" dilemma. Granny Hamner, conversely, had a strong fielding reputation at shortstop but made a miserably low number of plays. The baseball was just going elsewhere.
Edit: Though now that I look at Humphreys's Wizardry, it seems that Ashburn probably wasn't a "ball hog" who took chances away from other outfielders. Humphreys puts Ashburn's huge putout totals squarely on the tendency of his pitching staff to yield fly balls. Incidentally, he has Ashburn as #6 all-time, behind Pettis.
When I was a kid I thought Pettis and Devon White were incredible.
I thought Dom was considered a better fielder than Joe? Or was that just delusional Sox fans?
I've only been seriously watching baseball since '98, I think the best long-career CF I've seen in that time is Cameron. Other guys might pick it better but they didn't last or couldn't hit enough to play full-time, like Franklin Gutierrez and Endy Chavez.
I thought the 1950s Phillies staff was not only a flyball staff but low strikeout, giving Ashburn a huge number of opportunities.
That's not just Sox fans. It's probably everybody except Yankee fans.
That's not just Sox fans. It's probably everybody except Yankee fans.
I always heard Dom was viewed as better, but Joe's reputation is much better than the BRef stats give him credit for.
By reputation, you'd expect Joe to be +10-15 rField, and Dom to be +15-20.
Charles Einstein said that as a throwaway line in Willie's Time
It was also a field with a huge CF (447'), so a fleet CF might get extras that way too. I had his baseball card but never saw him play.
He is also the career leader in awesome name
Zoilo Versalles laughs at you.
And Zeppo and Gummo DiMaggio were supposed to be even better than Vince.
Where does Urban Shocker rate?
In the NBJHBA, James quotes Vince as saying he could play rings around Joe in center and Bill Deane as saying "How can he be the greatest center fielder of all time if he's the third best center fielder in his family?"
In Dom's writer-up, Curt Gowdy claims Dom was as good a runner, thrower, and fielder as Joe, and Al Hirschberg wrote "He was, in the opinion of many observers, the best center fielder in baseball, even better than Joe."
Bill has Dom ahead of Joe, and Joe ahead of Vince, but he summarizes it by saying that they all were quite exceptional and worthy of Gold Gloves in the majority of the seasons that they played.
Pretty high. That '27 Yankees pitching staff was loaded with great names: Waite Hoyt, Wilcy Moore, Dutch Ruether, and the aforementioned Urban Shocker.
On top of all that, one of the first songs I ever learned was this little gem:
Who hits the ball and makes it go?
Dominic DiMaggio.
Who runs the bases fast, not slow?
Dominic DiMaggio.
Who's better than his brother Joe?
Dominic DiMaggio.
But when it comes to gettin' dough,
they give it all to brother Joe."
There might have been a little delusional Red Sox fandom involved in its creation.
Pretty damn high. He's the inspiration for my future Nu-Metal band, Suburban Shocker. I'm thinking we'll cover the Dimaggio song.
I think there's a really good chance the best defensive CF or SS in history never made the majors. Hitting a baseball is wicked hard.
You might get drafted, b/c somebody thought they could "teach you to hit", but would likely wash out in rookie ball,
John Vukovich was in that category, at least by reputation; nobody ever saw him play enough at the major-league level to know exactly how good he was. He was by general agreement a better defensive third baseman than Mike Schmidt, and probably at least as good a shortstop as Larry Bowa, but since he was playing on the same team as Mike Schmidt and Larry Bowa, and also batting a career .161 with no plate discipline or power, it was really hard to tell. The Phillies kept him around for a couple of years on the principle that Schmidt never got hurt, and there was no sense in having a defensive caddy for Schmidt who was a worse third baseman than Schmidt. To be better defensively than Schmidt was a pretty tall order, though.
Wow! He's in Bill Bergen territory on offense.
I remember reading an article a few years ago from some writer who followed a minor club with a scout for a month (the writer did not normally wrote abut the minors)- he mentioned seeing some 3B for a series- best fielding 3B he'd ever seen was absolutely mesmerized.. couldn't believe he wasn't in the majors, or playing SS... the scout told him he really was a SS, but was playing 3B because a prospect needed the time at SS... the writer was like, "What you mean this guy isn't a prospect?" The scout told him to look him up- he did- 30 years old, slightly sub-Mendoza for the year- and his entire career, never higher than AA...
went back to the scout, the scout said there's good glove and no hit, and then there's really NO HIT...
My guess is that someone with the athleticism to be the best SS, but absolutely no hitting skill/aptitude couldn't be THAT bad a hitter, they'd be- at worst- an average hitter for a pitcher, or may be this guy
Seriously, people like this troll just make #### up just so people will complain.
Brendan Ryan is the current day Mark Belanger. I'm not sure that either was better than Adam Everett at his peak.
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