And, he'd probably have an Indians hat on his bust

Should Omar Vizquel be in the Baseball Hall of Fame? I say yes.

My thinking is pretty simple on the matter: with 11 gold gloves, Vizquel is one of the greatest fielding shortstops not only of his era, but of all time. The only player with more gold gloves as a shortstop is Ozzie Smith, who has 13 to Vizquel’s 11.

One would tend to link Smith and Vizquel, because many people can remember both playing. They both were switch hitters who played acrobatic defense at short. Both were largely considered the best shortstops in the game when they played. Neither was an especially good hitter, although they both had seasons where they were very productive with their bats as well as their gloves. Both had exactly one season they hit more than .300.

However, according to the wonderful site Baseball-Reference.com, the most similar player in baseball history to Omar Vizquel is Luis Aparicio. The site uses Bill James “Similarity Score” method to make the comparison. For the record, Smith scores 901 out of a possible 1,000 points, while Aparicio scores 927.

The next most comparable player to Vizquel is Rabbit Maranville at 885. He played from 1912-1935, during a career spanning the dead-ball era and the following era of Babe Ruth and home runs.

Why does this matter? All three of Vizquel’s closest matches using this method are in the Hall of Fame.

Given that he was the closest, here are some facts to compare Vizquel and Aparicio.

To start, both are from Venezuela. Aparicio debuted with the White Sox at age 22, Vizquel debuted with the Mariners at age 22.

Aparicio showed up more often in the MVP voting, ten times to Vizquel’s one.

The meat of the debate comes from their fielding records, though. During their careers, Vizquel won more gold gloves, 11 to 9. That would seem to say that Vizquel was better, compared to his peers.

Looking closer, the first thing that jumped out at me was Aparicio’s assist totals. Either he had greater range than Vizquel, or he played for teams with more ground ball pitchers.

In Aparicio’s top three seasons, he had 563, 535 and 551 assists. Vizquel’s top three seasons were 475, 447 and 444. Games played were not that different.

Offsetting that, however, are the players’ error totals.

Aparicio’s top three seasons, in terms of most errors, were 35 (his rookie year), 30 and 25 (how symmetrical). Omar’s were 20, 18 and 15 (twice).

So, I suppose, just by looking at numbers, we can conclude that Aparicio had better range, but Omar had better hands.

On another note, Omar stayed pretty consistently around 100 double plays turned during his full seasons. His highs were 108, 105 and 102, but he was nearly always around 100.

Aparicio’s best three seasons were 117, 104 and 102. He, also, was consistently around 100.

Here’s the short version of all three stats for Smith, just to be consistent. He debuted at age 23. Smith had eight seasons of more than 500 assists, topping out with 621, 555 and 549. In a full season, his greatest error totals were 25, 24 and 22. Smith’s best DP totals were 113 and 111 twice.

With 13 gold gloves, you can see why Smith may have been the best fielding shortstop ever.

Even if we conclude that Smith and Aparicio were the first- and second- best fielding shortstops ever, at third-best Vizquel would still get my vote for the hall of fame, if I had one.