Omar Vizquel

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Omar Vizquel

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series: Omar Vizquel

Five facts about Omar Vizquel:

Omar Vizquel played 2,709 games at shortstop in his career. This is the most defensive games at shortstop in major-league history. Vizquel's 2,968 career games played are the 7th-most in major-league history.

Omar Vizquel had 7,676 assists as a shortstop, the third-most in major-league history. He participated in 1,734 double plays at shortstop, the most in major-league history.

Omar Vizquel led his league in fielding percentage by a shortstop six times. His career fielding percentage of .985 is the best by a shortstop in major-league history.

Vizquel won 11 Gold Gloves at shortstop, the second-most in major-league history behind Ozzie Smith.

Omar Vizquel had 2,877 hits in his major-league career. This is the 43rd-most in major-league history. Only two players with more hits in their career than Vizquel have appeared on at least one Hall-of-Fame ballot and are not yet in the Hall of Fame, Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmeiro.

The first two tables below present Omar Vizquel's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1989	SEA	22	143	10.6	14.0	-1.4	-2.6
1990	SEA	23	81	7.1	9.1	-0.6	-1.4
1991	SEA	24	142	13.6	14.0	1.8	0.5
1992	SEA	25	136	14.3	17.2	-0.4	-1.9
1993	SEA	26	158	17.3	19.7	0.6	-1.2
1994	CLE	27	69	7.4	9.2	-0.4	-1.2
1995	CLE	28	136	18.2	15.5	5.4	3.7
1996	CLE	29	151	17.1	17.8	2.1	0.4
1997	CLE	30	153	17.9	17.7	3.1	1.4
1998	CLE	31	151	18.2	18.5	2.7	0.8
1999	CLE	32	144	20.9	16.1	7.6	5.8
2000	CLE	33	156	17.5	18.4	1.9	0.2
2001	CLE	34	155	16.5	17.5	1.7	-0.0
2002	CLE	35	151	19.3	19.8	2.5	0.5
2003	CLE	36	64	8.3	8.1	1.4	0.6
2004	CLE	37	148	16.7	17.5	1.8	0.1
2005	SFN	38	152	17.3	18.1	1.4	-0.3
2006	SFN	39	153	18.0	19.0	1.4	-0.4
2007	SFN	40	145	14.3	16.8	-0.7	-2.1
2008	SFN	41	92	6.7	8.8	-1.1	-1.8
2009	TEX	42	62	5.0	4.2	1.3	0.9
2010	CHA	43	108	9.9	9.8	1.0	0.1
2011	CHA	44	58	4.8	5.9	-0.4	-0.9
2012	TOR	45	60	3.4	4.8	-0.9	-1.3
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,968	320.2	337.6	31.6	-0.3
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			57	7.4	7.1	1.5	0.7
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			3,025	327.6	344.7	33.1	0.4

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1989	SEA	22	143	11.5	13.1	0.4	-0.8
1990	SEA	23	81	7.2	9.0	-0.5	-1.3
1991	SEA	24	142	13.3	14.3	1.3	-0.1
1992	SEA	25	136	15.1	16.4	1.3	-0.2
1993	SEA	26	158	17.3	19.7	0.7	-1.1
1994	CLE	27	69	7.6	9.0	-0.0	-0.8
1995	CLE	28	136	16.2	17.5	1.6	-0.1
1996	CLE	29	151	16.9	18.0	1.6	-0.0
1997	CLE	30	153	17.8	17.8	3.0	1.2
1998	CLE	31	151	17.7	19.0	1.6	-0.2
1999	CLE	32	144	19.6	17.3	5.2	3.4
2000	CLE	33	156	17.8	18.1	2.5	0.7
2001	CLE	34	155	15.5	18.5	-0.1	-1.8
2002	CLE	35	151	19.3	19.9	2.4	0.4
2003	CLE	36	64	8.1	8.3	1.1	0.3
2004	CLE	37	148	16.6	17.6	1.6	-0.1
2005	SFN	38	152	17.4	18.0	1.6	-0.1
2006	SFN	39	153	17.7	19.3	0.7	-1.1
2007	SFN	40	145	14.6	16.5	-0.1	-1.6
2008	SFN	41	92	6.6	8.8	-1.1	-1.9
2009	TEX	42	62	4.5	4.7	0.5	0.1
2010	CHA	43	108	9.2	10.5	-0.3	-1.2
2011	CHA	44	58	4.7	6.0	-0.6	-1.1
2012	TOR	45	60	3.6	4.6	-0.5	-0.9
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,968	315.7	342.1	23.6	-8.2
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			57	7.3	7.2	1.3	0.6
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			3,025	323.0	349.3	24.9	-7.7

This is Omar Vizquel's third year on the Hall-of-Fame ballot. I have written articles about the Hall-of-Fame candidates every year in which Omar Vizquel has been on the BBWAA ballot. Much of these earlier articles are somewhat obsolete due to changes to my Player won-lost records over time. But, for the sake of posterity, these old articles are linked at the end of my general article on Player won-lost records and the Hall of Fame.

Vote Prediction

This is Omar Vizquel's third year on the Hall-of-Fame ballot. In his first year, he received 156 votes, or 37.0% of the vote. In his second year on the ballot, he gained 26 additional votes, for 182 total votes and 42.8% of the vote.

In the wonderful Hall-of-Fame tracker put together by Ryan Thibodeaux includes a column titled "If No 10-Player Limit, Would Have Also Voted For:". Last year, Vizquel was named there 8 times, a somewhat above average number of mentions (the 14 returning candidates were named a total of 94 times, or just under 7 mentions per player).

Clearly, the momentum of Omar Vizquel's Hall-of-Fame candidacy is positive. The only questions are how fast it is moving and whether it might bump against a natural ceiling below 75%. In terms of predicting this year's vote, the latter of these questions doesn't really matter. It is extremely unlikely that Vizquel will gain enough votes to approach 75% this year anyway. I do, however, think that Vizquel could be poised to make a significant gain this year. In fact, I predict that he will double his gain from last year, which would take him from 42.8% last year to 54.4% of the vote this year.

Player Won-Lost Records and Omar Vizquel

From a purely statistical standpoint, Omar Vizquel might have the most controversial Hall-of-Fame candidacy of any player on the ballot. I get the sense that there are some people who are absolutely convinced that Omar Vizquel is an obvious Hall-of-Famer and these people are absolutely baffled as to why his support is as low as it is. Vizquel played the most games at shortstop - one of the two most important fielding positions - in major-league history, he won the second-most Gold Gloves of any shortstop in major-league history, he has the highest career fielding percentage of any shortstop in major-league history, and he has the most hits of any player not in the Hall of Fame who is eligible for the Hall of Fame and is not associated with steroids. This certainly seems like a strong case.

On the other side, however, are more sabermetric fans who look at Omar Vizquel's career WAR (45.6 per Baseball-Reference) and see him as falling well short of the Hall of Fame. Moving beyond WAR, this group will point out that Vizquel was named to only three All-Star teams in his career and that he was named on an MVP ballot only once (he finished in 16th place in AL MVP voting in 1999).

Player won-lost records are, essentially, a "sabermetric" statistic. They differ in some respects from WAR as presented at various other websites (in ways which, I think, make Player won-lost record superior). But the general results that come out of Player won-lost records largely agree with the basic findings of "sabermetrics": offense is more important than defense, even for shortstops; the value of a player's offense depends on the run-scoring environment in which it took place; fielding percentage is a poor measure of fielding ability. My counterpart of WAR is WORL - wins over replacement level. My replacement level is a bit higher than Baseball-Reference's (and Fangraphs), but my WORL numbers are essentially on the same level as WAR. And, in fact, Omar Vizquel looks like a pretty weak Hall-of-Fame candidate measured by either pWORL or (especially) by eWORL in the tables above.

Part of this is that Vizquel's numbers are dragged down by his play in his 40's. In fact, Player won-lost records think that Vizquel was essentially a below-average player after his age-33 season (2000). But Player won-lost records also aren't overly impressed with Vizquel's early career (say, through age 27) either.

And yet, I think that Player won-lost records are an excellent way to understand the difference in opinion on Vizquel's Hall-of-Fame case.

The next table shows the top 10 shortstops for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records ranked by pWins earned as a shortstop. Player wins, pWins, are tied to team wins, so this shows the shortstops who contributed the most directly to wins for their teams.


Top 10 Shortstops, ranked by career pWins (at SS only)
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Derek Jeter	361.0	316.9	61.0	94.0
2	Ozzie Smith	332.4	310.0	37.0	67.7
3	Luis Aparicio	329.2	327.6	17.3	50.1
4	Luke Appling	307.3	287.6	27.6	58.4
5	Cal Ripken	306.9	278.0	47.6	75.5
6	Omar Vizquel	301.2	315.4	2.6	32.5
7	Jimmy Rollins	290.0	273.8	24.4	51.6
8	Barry Larkin	287.9	246.6	50.6	76.6
9	Pee Wee Reese	287.2	226.2	68.5	95.1
10	Bert Campaneris	270.8	265.5	23.6	50.0

Sabermetric fans - including me - would point out that one also needs to consider pLosses, to measure those player wins against opportunities - i.e., that a measure like pWOPA - pWins over positional average - or pWORL - pWins over replacement level - are more meaningful measures of player value. And Omar Vizquel looks weaker in those measures.

And yet: the object of the game is to win. And Omar Vizquel contributed to a lot of wins for a lot of teams over a lot of years.

Article last updated: December 30, 2019

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series

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