Before the Dan Haren trade went down yesterday, the big topic on my Twitter feed was spurred by a single question from a follower on Saturday night: Do I consider Omar Vizquel a Hall of Famer? My answer -- a pretty easy "no" -- created an accidental controversy over Vizquel's case and the nature of defensive reputations.

So let's dive into this further.

While Omar Vizquel has always been an above-average defender, he's not the all-time great that his supporters would have you believe. TotalZone, developed by Sean Smith and the best defensive metric we have for the period from 1950 to 2000, has Vizquel with more than 100 fewer runs saved at shortstop than Ozzie Smith (who's in the Hall) and Mark Belanger (who isn't), a significant difference when those arguing for Vizquel's induction have to lean so heavily on his glove. Smith was actually the better hitter as well once you adjust for eras (with the higher OPS+), and a substantially better base stealer, with almost 200 more successful steals and fewer times caught stealing than Vizquel. There really is no comparison between their candidacies.

Jay Jaffe, who blogs at Futility Infielder and Baseball Prospectus, has come up with his own Hall of Fame worthiness stat, JAWS, that has Vizquel well below the career and peak standards for a Hall of Fame shortstop, ahead of only Rabbit Maranville (maybe the worst Hall of Fame selection, period) and Luis Aparicio.

Aparicio himself was a poor selection, among the worst by the BBWAA, as he was a terrible hitter who finished in the bottom 10 in his league in OPS 12 times. And while some voters will rely on the "if player X is in, player Y should be too" argument, it's a horrible way to build a meaningful monument to great players because it will lead to the sort of quick dilution that has Jim Rice and (could have) Omar Vizquel in the Hall. In fact, Jaffe's statistic -- which averages a player's peak Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) score with his total career WARP -- has Vizquel below such clear non-candidates as Nomar Garciaparra, Chris Speier and Garry Templeton.

I've also had readers point to Vizquel's raw hit total, but without any consideration of all the outs required to get those hits -- 8,030 as I write this, most among active players and 14th most all time.

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Vizquel ranks 50th in hits, 137th in total bases and 61st in times on base, but made more outs than all but 13 other players in history to achieve even those modest rankings.