Mike Piazza - Can an argument be made that he's the best catcher ever?

[fenrir]

I think most people can agree that he's the best hitting catcher ever for both peak and career. Is that enough to make him the best catcher ever? How much does his below average defense hurt his case?

For what it's worth, I think his 9.3 WAR in 1997 may be the highest by a catcher ever.

[willshad]

I believe that Piazza is the number one catcher, and the people who list anyone else 1) overrate catcher defense 2) overrate how bad Piazza was on defense, concentrating only on his poor arm, and 3) compare him to how other catchers were at their BEST, and forget the fact that they were all inconsistent from season to season.

Piazza had pretty much everything working against him:

-He was in poor to mediocre lineups his entire career. Contrast this to ALL the other all time catchers, who were in incredible lineups. This undoubtedly helped them offensively. Put Piazza on the Big Red Machine or some of those Yankees and As teams, and he has Dimaggio type numbers. Maybe several 150 RBI seasons.

-He was killed by his home stadiums. Taking just his road stats, Piazza is probably a top 20 all time hitter, at ANY position. Put him in even an average hitting stadium, and his numbers would be much better.

-May be a minor thing, but he lost time due to the strike. Without it, he goes 30 100 .300 his first 9 seasons.

Even with all this working against him he still did not have an 'off' year until he was in his mid 30s. Other catchers alternated MVP type seasons with less than stellar ones, while Piazza had an MVP type season every year.

I think all of this is just too much for other catchers to overcome.

[fenrir]

I believe that Piazza is the number one catcher, and the people who list anyone else 1) overrate catcher defense 2) overrate how bad Piazza was on defense, concentrating only on his poor arm, and 3) compare him to how other catchers were at their BEST, and forget the fact that they were all inconsistent from season to season.

Piazza had pretty much everything working against him:

-He was in poor to mediocre lineups his entire career. Contrast this to ALL the other all time catchers, who were in incredible lineups. This undoubtedly helped them offensively. Put Piazza on the Big Red Machine or some of those Yankees and As teams, and he has Dimaggio type numbers.

-He was killed by his home stadiums. Taking just his road stats, Piazza is probably a top 20 all time hitter, at ANY position. Put him in even an average hitting stadium, and his numbers would be much better.

-May be a minor thing, but he lost time due to the strike. Without it, he goes 30 100 .300 his first 9 seasons.

Even with all this working against him he still did not have an 'off' year until he was in his mid 30s. Other catchers alternated MVP type seasons with less than stellar ones, while Piazza had an MVP type season every year.

I think all of this is just too much for other catchers to overcome.

Looks like we finally agree on something.

I think Piazza had one of the greatest starts to a career ever, probably just as impressive as Pujols or Frank Thomas if you consider the position he played. Maybe even more impressive.

The funny thing is if he were the excellent defender that someone like Pudge Rodriguez was, there probably would be talk about him being one of the ten best players ever.

[BondsOverBabe]

Even if Piazza was just below average like Jorge Posada he might be the best catcher of his generation but Piazza was just absolutely awful

[BigRon]

Piazza certainly belongs in any serious discussion about best catcher. It's clear that he's the best hitting catcher in ML history. It also should be clear that his defense wasn't as bad as many make it out to be. That said, he didn't throw well, and in some eras that is a critical failing. If Piazza had come up in the 60s or 70s, I wonder what would have happened in those high octane base stealing days. It's possible that he would have been run out of the lineup, or at least forced to first base.

Based on that concern, I can't rank Piazza number 1.

[ol' aches and pains]

I would rate Bench and Campanella above Piazza on the strength of their defense. They weren't bad hitters, either.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

From 1993-2002 Piazza averaged per 162 games:

.322/.389/.579, 154 OPS+, 41 HR, 126 RBI, 100 R, 192 H, 30 doubles, 66 BB, 94 K

For a decade Piazza hit like Johnny Mize as a catcher. Simply amazing.

[pheasant]

Piazza hit the high heater very well too. Thus, he could have played in any era, imho. I watched a lot of him play during his prime. He's my favorite catcher of all-time. He's by far the best hitting catcher ever. However, he had a terrible thowing arm. I believe that he ruined his throwing arm like I did by lifting weights. I think I'd place him 3rd all-time. I.e, I look at how a guy could play in each era. If you move Piazza to the Dead Ball era, he's in big trouble. However, I have him as the best from 1920-1960s since teams didn't steal many bases during that era. Once the stolen base gets popular again, then he drops down in the rankings.

[Blackout]

yes, only because Josh Gibson never got to play in MLB

[Freakshow]

For what it's worth, I think his 9.3 WAR in 1997 may be the highest by a catcher ever.

Yep. Most WAR minimum 100 G at catcher:

Rk           Player WAR/pos OPS+  PA Year Age  Tm Lg   BA  OBP  SLG
1       Mike Piazza     9.3  185 633 1997  28 LAD NL .362 .431 .638
2      Johnny Bench     9.1  166 653 1972  24 CIN NL .270 .379 .541
3         Joe Mauer     8.7  134 633 2008  25 MIN AL .328 .413 .451
4    Darrell Porter     8.4  142 679 1979  27 KCR AL .291 .421 .484
5       Gary Carter     7.8  146 653 1982  28 MON NL .293 .381 .510
6      Johnny Bench     7.6  143 708 1974  26 CIN NL .280 .363 .507
7         Joe Mauer     7.5  170 606 2009  26 MIN AL .365 .444 .587
8    Darren Daulton     7.4  156 585 1992  30 PHI NL .270 .385 .524
9        Yogi Berra     7.3  142 596 1956  31 NYY AL .298 .378 .534
10     Chris Hoiles     7.2  162 503 1993  28 BAL AL .310 .416 .585
11   Roy Campanella     7.2  154 590 1953  31 BRO NL .312 .395 .611
12     Carlton Fisk     7.1  162 514 1972  24 BOS AL .293 .370 .538
13        Joe Mauer     7.0  144 608 2006  23 MIN AL .347 .429 .507
14      Mike Piazza     7.0  151 602 1993  24 LAD NL .318 .370 .561
15     Bill Freehan     7.0  145 635 1968  26 DET AL .263 .366 .454
16   Roy Campanella     7.0  159 562 1951  29 BRO NL .325 .393 .590
17     Carlton Fisk     6.8  138 632 1977  29 BOS AL .315 .402 .521
18      Gary Carter     6.7  138 633 1985  31 NYM NL .281 .365 .488
19      Gary Carter     6.7  143 669 1984  30 MON NL .294 .366 .487

[redban]

911%u00252Bmike%2Bpiazza.jpg

Piazza is my favorite player all-time, so yes - I say he is the best catcher all-time!

I remember when he was with the Mets. When he came to bat everyone in Shea would stop what they were doing and watch his AB to see if he'll homer. There were always tons of Piazza #31 Mets jerseys in the crowd. Even today, if you go to Citi Field you still see lots of people wearing it.

He was a complete hitter - could hit for average and power. I loved how he went to Center-Field and Right-Centerfield so much. As for as right-handed hitters go, Piazza's right there with the best of them.

As for his defense, lots of pitchers have praised Piazza for his game-calling and ability to block pitches in the dirt. His throwing was poor, but there are more important parts of being a catcher.

Piazza's biggest weakness was actually baserunning, not defense. He was slow! And he was apt to make a lot of blunders on the basepaths that cost the team outs. Newspapers in NY regularly killed him for it.

[philliesfiend55]

Ivan Rodriguez, who is supposed to announce his retirement in the next few days, comes closer to fitting the desciption of the "best catcher ever" when you add his offense, defense and durability all together. However, Piazza will hold the record for the most home runs for a catcher for a long time. 396 of his 429 career home runs came as a catcher. A poor decision by Piazza to play his final season in the American League with Oakland, where he was used only as a designated hitter and never as a catcher ruined Piazza's bid to become the first player in history to reach 400 home runs as a catcher.

[redban]

I believe that Piazza is the number one catcher, and the people who list anyone else 1) overrate catcher defense 2) overrate how bad Piazza was on defense, concentrating only on his poor arm, and 3) compare him to how other catchers were at their BEST, and forget the fact that they were all inconsistent from season to season.

Piazza had pretty much everything working against him:

-He was in poor to mediocre lineups his entire career. Contrast this to ALL the other all time catchers, who were in incredible lineups. This undoubtedly helped them offensively. Put Piazza on the Big Red Machine or some of those Yankees and As teams, and he has Dimaggio type numbers. Maybe several 150 RBI seasons.

-He was killed by his home stadiums. Taking just his road stats, Piazza is probably a top 20 all time hitter, at ANY position. Put him in even an average hitting stadium, and his numbers would be much better.

-May be a minor thing, but he lost time due to the strike. Without it, he goes 30 100 .300 his first 9 seasons.

Even with all this working against him he still did not have an 'off' year until he was in his mid 30s. Other catchers alternated MVP type seasons with less than stellar ones, while Piazza had an MVP type season every year.

I think all of this is just too much for other catchers to overcome.

Another thing you could add to the list is how he started so late. He turned 25 in his rookie season in 1993. Of all the great catchers, Piazza is the only one who came around so old.

Let's say he had started earlier, at around 22 years old - he might have had over 500 career homeruns.

[fenrir]

Piazza certainly belongs in any serious discussion about best catcher. It's clear that he's the best hitting catcher in ML history. It also should be clear that his defense wasn't as bad as many make it out to be. That said, he didn't throw well, and in some eras that is a critical failing. If Piazza had come up in the 60s or 70s, I wonder what would have happened in those high octane base stealing days. It's possible that he would have been run out of the lineup, or at least forced to first base.

Based on that concern, I can't rank Piazza number 1.

You make some very good points.

[SHOELESSJOE3]

Piazza hit the high heater very well too. Thus, he could have played in any era, imho. I watched a lot of him play during his prime. He's my favorite catcher of all-time. He's by far the best hitting catcher ever. However, he had a terrible thowing arm. I believe that he ruined his throwing arm like I did by lifting weights. I think I'd place him 3rd all-time. I.e, I look at how a guy could play in each era. If you move Piazza to the Dead Ball era, he's in big trouble. However, I have him as the best from 1920-1960s since teams didn't steal many bases during that era. Once the stolen base gets popular again, then he drops down in the rankings.

I'll say he could. As a Yankee fan he scared the hell out of me in the last inning of the 5th and final game, 2000 World Series. With a man on and Mets down two runs Mike's fly to Bernie Williams in center ended the WS.
But I did notice and was really impressed he hit a deep fly ball off a Mariano Rivera fast ball. Impressed because the pitch was a high one, most hitters even strong hitters foul that back or pop it up.
Mike hit it a long way, how he got "on top" of such a high pitch and drove such a deep drive, strong guy.