So you want to elect Omar Vizquel to the Hall of Fame.

You’re in good company. Vizquel looks to be one of the most formidable newcomers on this year’s ballot. Roughly half of Hall of Fame voters who have thus far released their ballots checked the box next to his name.

Vizquel’s case starts with his defense. All five 12-time Gold Glove winners are Hall of Famers; Vizquel took home the hardware 11 times. His career .985 fielding percentage (if you prefer old metrics) and 128 Baseball Reference Runs from Fielding (if you prefer new) put him on the short list of shortstop glove maestros.

With the bat, Vizquel held his own. He was a career .272/.336/.352 hitter (better than Ozzie Smith, his fans will tell you), and his 2,877 career hits rank sixth all-time among shortstops behind three Hall of Famers, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodríguez. His 1,445 runs rank ninth at the position. Impressively (especially in the modern game), he also walked (1,028) nearly as many times as he struck out (1,087).

Vizquel’s rep as a defensive wizard with proficient bat control is a plausible argument for putting him in the Hall of Fame. But it also comes with an intellectual obligation. By voting for Vizquel, you are implicitly setting a personal standard for Hall of Fame voting that isn’t easily escaped. To be consistent, a vote for one player compels you to at least consider the other candidates on the ballot who are on his same tier. This year, that means that, if you’re going to reserve one of the 10 spots on your ballot for Vizquel, you ought to set aside another for his pitching equivalent: Jamie Moyer.

Even Vizquel’s most ardent supporters will concede that the Venezuelan shortstop’s Hall of Fame case relies on his longevity. Starting in 1989 and ending in 2012, Vizquel’s career spanned parts of four decades in the majors—that’s impressive! But Moyer was even more long-lasting, pitching parts of 25 seasons (a quarter century!) between 1986 and 2012. (Moyer missed the 1992 and 2011 seasons.) People often refer derisively to Hall of Fame candidates like Vizquel and Moyer as “compilers,” but in this era of intense roster competition and injury epidemics, it takes skill to stick around the majors for that long.

Thanks to his long career, Vizquel’s hit total almost crested the plateau of 3,000, seen as a nearly automatic ticket to the Hall of Fame. Similarly, Moyer stuck around long enough to win 269 games—just shy of the magical 300 benchmark. Put another way, Vizquel got 96 percent of the way to his milestone, and Moyer got 90 percent of the way—not too different. If you’re willing to round up for Vizquel, be a pal and do the same for Moyer.

You might view Moyer’s 4.25 ERA as a dealbreaker; it would be the worst in Cooperstown by an Upstate New York mile. (Currently, Red Ruffing possesses the highest ERA of any Hall of Famer at 3.80, although Jack Morris’s 3.90 could steal the crown if the Modern Baseball Era Committee elects him this Sunday.) But Vizquel’s critics point to his low .688 career OPS in exactly the same way, so you shouldn’t see this as an insurmountable obstacle for Moyer.

In fact, this objection to Vizquel holds up better than the knock against Moyer. Moyer’s high ERA is largely a product of the high-offense era he pitched in. Moyer’s ERA- is 97, indicating that he was three percentage points better than the average pitcher of his generation. On the other hand, adjusted for era, Vizquel’s offense was actually 18 points worse than average (an 82 OPS+). That would be tied for the worst such mark in the Hall of Fame—just like Moyer’s unadjusted ERA. Oh well—no candidate is perfect, right?

You may choose to forgive the fact that Vizquel didn’t hit for much power (a career .080 ISO) by focusing on his expertise at avoiding strikeouts (a career 9.0 percent K-rate). But if you’re prepared to honor excellence at specific approaches to hitting or pitching (as opposed to their outcomes), spare a vote for Moyer’s excellent control. Moyer walked just 6.7 percent of the batters he faced in his career—better than Hall of Famers like Pedro Martínez and Warren Spahn. True, he struck out just 14.1 percent of batters, but strikeouts are to pitchers what home runs are to batters, and Vizquel didn’t need home runs to get where he is today.

Admittedly, it does hurt Moyer’s case that he was named to only one all-star team and received Cy Young votes only three times. But if you’re an Omar Vizquel voter, then a player’s lack of recognition by his contemporaries doesn’t bother you too much. For all his accomplishments, Vizquel attended only three All-Star Games during his 24-year career. His only appearance on an MVP ballot came in 1999, when he finished 16th.

Of course, Vizquel does have all those Gold Gloves. If your support for Vizquel rests primarily on his defense, then you must be comfortable with enshrining not only all-around good players, but also those who are elite at one specific element of the game. Moyer checks this box too. He deserves recognition for fashioning one of the best change-up-driven careers ever. Moyer’s 89.8 change-up runs above average (wCH) rank fourth in baseball since we started tracking pitch values in 2002.

In the end, the best metric we have to comprehensively measure player value, on both sides of the ball, is Wins Above Replacement. Although both players don’t quite measure up to their positions’ standards in the Hall of Fame (as defined by Jay Jaffe’s JAWS metric), they lag them by similar margins. In the eyes of both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs, Moyer (48.2 fWAR) contributed more to his teams than Vizquel (42.6) did. In the seven best seasons of his career, Moyer amassed 26.8 fWAR; Vizquel posted 25.8, meaning Moyer had a slightly better peak as well. According to the advanced stats, Moyer and Vizquel are as evenly matched as they are in traditional ones.

For me, both Vizquel and Moyer fall short of Hall of Fame status. But both were brilliant, enduring threads in the fabric of the history of baseball, and both deserve a fond valediction. Whether that entails a vote for the Hall of Fame is up to you, dear voter, but please consider them equally when you cast your ballot.