If Omar Vizquel is a Hall of Famer, So is Andruw Jones

Media members have filled out their Baseball Hall of Fame ballots for 2020, which means it's time once again get my hopes up for Andruw Jones to get in, only to have them dashed and have a player significantly worse get in instead. This year, it looks like it's going to be Omar Vizquel.

I've seen Vizquel featured on just about every ballot, while I've only seen Jones a handful of times. You could go back and forth on the simple "yes" or "no" of whether you think any particular player is a Hall of Famer, but for the sake of this argument, I want to focus on these two players since it at least seems like right now that Vizquel could get in while Jones likely won't.

17 more wins above replacement, 354 more home runs, 338 more RBI and an OPS 135 points higher. Defensively, Vizquel won 11 Gold Gloves and Jones won 10 — all in a row. The only stat in which Vizquel has a significant advantage is hits, and even those came in almost 3,000 more career at-bats — if Jones continued at his career average of .254 and had as many ABs as Vizquel, he would have ended up with 2,693 hits.

They were both elite defenders, but Jones was significantly more of a threat at the plate unless you really needed a slap single the other way. My co-worker and four-time All-Star Paul Lo Duca said today that Jones was the best defensive center fielder he ever played against.

Additionally, in the Postseason, Jones hit .273 in 18 series — 19 points higher than his overall career average — while Vizquel hit .250 in 11 series — 22 points lower than his overall career average.

There is certainly an argument for Vizquel to be in the Hall of Fame. But there is absolutely no argument to have Vizquel in and Jones out. This would be a miscarriage of justice the likes of which we have never seen before.

Shoutout to Jon Heyman. May more people have his kind of well-thought-out rationale.