Best shortstops of all time

Didn't see the other pages, but there's the reasoning for that last one.

 

I tend to disagree about the value of fielding percentage. Perhaps career fielding percentage may start to be worthy, but I've always felt that a player's fielding percentage is such a terrible, terrible way to evaluate his efficiency at the position. I'm not a stat geek like Bill James or any of his followers, but that doesn't mean I can't still see the poor logic in fielding percentage. If a player has five errors on the season, don't say he has something like a .992 fielding percentage. To me, that signifies that he will make only 8 errors in 1000 chances, and if he has 5 already, he'd only make two more. For periods 40 games into the season, that doesn't make sense.

Then you count in the factor that some balls are just plain unreachable, others are hit directly at a player in a shift, etc. and you're all over the place with a verifiable statistic for fielding.

I know this was completely unrelated to the argument, and I can't tell if you were being sarcastic, M_W, but that's my feeling on the situation.

 

That's the difference between a guy with a mediocre batting average and a guy with a good batting average. That's not the difference between a mediocre hitter and a great hitter.

 

Guess not.

 

At this point it should have been A-Rod No. 1, no further argument. However, he sucked his ego in and moved to placate Jeter (which was probably the right move given it was the Yankees and he had all those rings.)

Jeter is an all-time great right now, 2200 hits? My god, I had no idea. He's a marvel, but not the fielder A-Rod was/is. I started out ready to laugh at the lady, now I realize she was right.

Where's Eddie Brinkman and Roger Metzger?

 

Vizquel should be ahead of Ozzie Smith. Better in the field and at the plate.

 

To me the Jeter versus Vizuel debate is a dead one. Jeter has four world series rings, a career avg well over .300 (what's vizquel's? Maybe .270, but I doubt it)... Jeter is on pace to easily exceed 3,000 hits, and just for kicks, has won I believe the last three gold gloves at SS, so he's not exactly hurting his team there either...

I think Larkin should be in that top handful of names when talking about great shortstops... he was a gold glover, MVP, won a ring, and I THINK (could be wrong) was the first SS to go 30/30.. and a career avg. in the neighborhood of .300...

 

fwiw, Vizquel .275

 

I started thinking about that, Buck, after I said that Vizquel should be ahead of Smith. I don't think he'll get in, although he should.

 

No way Vizquel makes the Hall. Too many shortstops in his era bashing the ball and not sucking in the field. Jeter should be a lock. Ozzie was a player who defined his era, one of the five players people always refer to when talking baseball in the 1980s, plus several big postseason hits, and among the best 2-3 all time in range. Has Vizquel gotten less than his due? Perhaps. But he's not in the same convo as Ozzie.

 

That's why I think Vizquel doesn't get in. Ozzie has an aura about him that Vizquel doesn't. Vizquel was a forgotten man on the offensively-driven Indians teams in the 90s. But when you think about the Cardinals, you think of Ozzie.

Their numbers are pretty damn close, though.

Ozzie 13 gold gloves, Omar 11.
Ozzie .262 career hitter (.236 in postseason), Omar .275 (.250 in postseason)
Ozzie 2,460 hits, Omar 2,532
Ozzie 580 stolen bases, Omar 372

I think if one's a Hall-of-Famer, then so is the other.

 

Angel Berroa