With a 52.6 percent share of the vote on the 2020 Hall of Fame ballot, when Derek Jeter and Larry Walker were elected on their first and last years of eligibility, respectively, it looked like longtime defensive wiz Omar Vizquel was trending in the right direction. After all, if you're at over 50 percent on just year No. 3 of your candidacy, a Hall of Fame nod seems like it's coming in the not-so-distant future.
However, after 78 BBWAA ballots have been revealed so far for the 2022 class, Vizquel has received just eight votes — a 10.3 percent share of all ballots, per Ryan Thibodaux's Hall of Fame tracker — and is en route to a historic decline in percentage. Through what he described as "granular research," author and SABR member Chris Bodig shows us just how precipitous Vizquel's decline in support has been.
Bodig explains that Bender's huge fall occurred after the BBWAA ruled that only players active from 1922 to 1946 could be eligible for the vote, and Bender's career spanned from 1903-1917, save for a "one-inning 'gimmick' appearance in 1925," and he still managed to scrape up some votes.
Vizquel's decline is attributable to different reasons entirely. Audacy MLB insider Jon Heyman opines that it's hard to determine whether it's primarily due to "off-field issues, analytics or a combination."
The off-field issues were revealed over the past calendar year or so, with a report from The Athletic detailing domestic abuse allegations against Vizquel in December of 2020. Not long after, in August of 2021, a former bat boy for the Birmingham Barons sued Vizquel over alleged sexual harassment. As for the first allegations, Vizquel shared that they were "disregarded by the judge due to lack of evidence" through a social media post made earlier this week.
Analytically, Vizquel ranks as the No. 30 shortstop of all time in WAR and No. 42 in Jay Jaffe's "JAWS" metric — the latter of which specifically measures Hall of Fame worthiness — behind names like Tony Fernandez, Mark Belanger and Miguel Tejada in one or both of those metrics.
Vizquel finished his career with 2,877 hits, a .272/.336/.352 slash line and three All-Star nods to go along with a whopping 11 Gold Glove Awards.
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