Voters cool to former Braves star Jones

Center fielder, who hit 434 HRs, praised for his defense.

If Omar Vizquel had hit 400 home runs, no one would be debating his Hall of Fame credentials. Marrying that offensive figure with his stellar defensive reputation would have rubber-stamped his induction this year, his first on the ballot.

But for all of the acclaim Vizquel earned for his play at shortstop over a 24-year career — including 11 Gold Glove Awards — advanced statistics say he never had a season as baseball’s top defensive player. He came close, finishing second in the majors in defensive wins above replacement in 1993, but never reached the top.

There is, however, another first-time Hall of Fame can

didate who had an extended run as one of the game’s top defenders, including at least one season as baseball’s best

overall. He is Andruw Jones, who at his peak, as a center fielder for the Atlanta Braves, delivered some of the most impressive defensive seasons of any player in history while, almost as an aside, hitting 434 career home runs.

In other sports, it would be unthinkable to overlook a player so respected for defensive excellence. Deion Sand- ers became a first-ballot Hall of Famer in pro football. Dennis Rodman sailed into the Basketball Hall of Fame with a hearty endorsement from Michael Jordan. But despite having at least as many qualifications as Vizquel — and many other Hall of Fame can

didates this year — Jones is getting very little support in his first year of eligibility, according to Ryan Thibodaux’s tracking of Hall of Fame balloting.

Jones, who won 10 Gold Gloves, all in a row, from 1998 to 2007, was named on nine of the 178 ballots that had been made public on Thibodaux’s website as of Wednesday morning. Vizquel, whose offensive credentials pale next to Jones’, was named on 53 ballots. If Jones had one fewer vote, he would be sitting below the 5 percent threshold for returning on the next Hall of Fame ballot.

The contrast between Jones’ reputation among his peers and the voters is stark. “With all due respect to Willie Mays, who I never saw play, Andruw Jones is the best center fielder in our generation,” said Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine, Jones’ teammate for seven years in Atlanta.

What made him great?

Glavine raved about the sense of security of having Jones roaming the outfield behind him, with that extraor- dinary anticipation of every fly ball, and he said Jones had the opposite effect on oppo- nents. He unsettled them just by jogging out to his position.

Ivan Rodriguez, a Hall of Fame catcher who played against Jones, noticed the same thing and called Jones’ impact similar to that of a shut- down cornerback in the NFL.

“He’s a guy that when you’re at the plate, the last thing you want to do is hit the ball to

center field,” Rodriguez said. “He played very shallow, and you’d think you’re going to hit a ball over his head. And all of a sudden, he’d start running all the way to the wall, and there’s Andruw Jones mak- ing another great play.”

Catcher Brian McCann, who played three seasons with Jones in Atlanta, joined Rodriguez and Glavine on a conference call this week that was part of their participation in the Diamond Resorts Invitational golf tournament near Orlando, Florida. When the subject of Jones and his Hall of Fame prospects came up, they began to speak over one another in hopes of making a case for him.

Glavine, a fairly old-school player with an affinity for traditional statistics like wins and saves, made a surprising suggestion: Perhaps the game’s number-crunchers could build an argument for Jones.

“I think he’s one of those guys that you really have to start to take a look at how he impacted the game on the defensive side of the ball,” Glavine said. “How the Hall of Fame voting committee goes about doing that, I don’t know, but there are certainly all kinds of sabermetrics in today’s game that I think could be applied to Andruw.”

The statistical case

Glavine is right that analysis of defense has been refined in recent years. The most precise measure is a statistic called defensive runs saved, devised by Sports Info Solutions. The company uses game data and video to assess the quality and value of a fielder’s plays. For example, did he make a diving catch of a sinking line drive or did he break the wrong way, then trap a ball he should have caught easily?

Jones’ defensive peak, from 1997 to 2002, came just before Sports Info Solutions started tracking that statistic. While the number of runs Jones saved during those years is unknown, it is a testament to his excellence that from 2003 to 2007, as he began to decline, Jones still saved 67 runs. In the same time period, the second- and third-best defen- sive outfielders in baseball, Torii Hunter and Willy Taveras, combined for 68 (Hunter had 39, Taveras 29).Even after he had slowed down, Jones put a Babe Ruth-like distance between himself and his defensive competition.

In another effort to assign a numeric value to a player’s defensive contributions, Baseball Reference created a formula for defensive WAR. The statistic has been tracked to 1871 — five seasons before the National League was created. By Baseball Reference’s assessment, Jones is the best defensive outfielder in history, his 24.1 defensive WAR trumping Paul Blair’s 18.6 and Mays’ 18.1. He led all players, regardless of position, in defensive WAR in 1998.

Although runs saved has become a critical component of defensive WAR’s formula, John Dewan, owner of Sports Info Solutions and author of “The Fielding Bible,” said the best statistic for comparing players across eras was Bill James’ fielding win shares. It is part of James’ system of measuring a player’s contribution to his team’s wins, and it relies on a consistent formula through the years. By that measure, Jones ranks fourth among outfielders with 85.5 career fielding win shares, trailing only Tris Speaker (117.8), Mays (103.6) and Max Carey (94.8).

Jones led the majors in the statistic for five consecutive seasons, from 1998 to 2002, and he was in the top six for fielding win shares 10 times in 11 seasons.

For his part, James, regardless of what his statistic indicates, has publicly stated he does not feel Jones’ defense has been proved worthy of Hall of Fame consideration, but Dewan came to a different conclusion.

“There is no question that Andruw Jones was one of the best defensive outfielders of all time,” Dewan said.

HYOSUB SHIN / HSHIN@AJC.COM Former Braves center fielder Andruw Jones, being inducted into the Braves Hall of Fame in 2016, faces a rockier path to Cooperstown. He was named on nine of 178 ballots made public as of early Wednesday.