With Mike Piazza once again being snubbed for the Hall of Fame, garnering 69.9% of the vote from the BBWAA, people have taken to sharing their outrage that the “greatest hitting catcher of all time” isn’t in the Hall.
But why is it that we need that caveat of hitting catcher when we talk about Piazza? Because he was a bad defensive catcher, right? Wrong. You actually couldn’t be more wrong.
As it turns out Mike Piazza is one of the top defensive catchers to ever play the game. Seriously.
Now how can that truth be so different from the prevailing “common knowledge” from the days when Piazza was playing? We know more now about catcher defense and it’s impact now that we did when he played.
In 2012, Max Marchi at Baseball Prospectus sorted through 64 years of data and determined the top 10 defensive catchers of all time based on how many runs they prevented in their careers. Tony Pena, Mike Scioscia and Javy Lopez were first, second and third.
Mike Piazza was fourth, having saved 205 runs – the equivalent of 20.5 wins with his glove over the span of his career. Better than Carlton Fisk, better than Johnny Bench, better than Ivan Rodriguez all of whom had great defensive reputations. And Piazza played fewer seasons than any of those three.
Craig Wright, in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2009, showed that hitters had a .723 OPS with Piazza behind the plate, as opposed to .748 with other catchers, a significant 25-point reduction.
Piazza’s poor defensive reputation mostly stems from his deficiencies throwing out basestealers, but things like pitch framing, handling a pitching staff, ability to avoid wild pitches and passed balls, which are more quantifiable now than they were in his playing days. And those are the categories in which Piazza excelled, which is why now his defense is vindicated.
So let’s stop trivializing Piazza’s career by calling him the greatest hitting catcher of all time and call him what he really is – the greatest catcher of all time. Period.
As far as changing anyone’s opinions in the BBWAA, I don’t think that this new evidence of the past few years will do much to change any perceptions, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
There was some thought that Piazza was a bad thrower. I don’t believe he was very far from “average”.
Interesting that many of the stat gurus have low regard for the Stolen Base…the strategy itself. However, they jump to praise Catchers who throw out lots of base runners. Keeping the running game in check is usually, and mostly, determined by the pitcher—still, some Catchers are great throwers. Piazza wasn’t a great thrower.
I felt he was a decent receiver….a good in the game catcher. He was physical and fearless both blocking pitches and the plate. He was a great hitter, a big star…and stricly a Lunch Pail worker as a Catcher.
Good article. Mike seemed to have Defensive problems toward the end of his career. True he wasn’t Johnny Bench behind the plate, but he was good enough. No reason for his rejection from HOF voters.
His size was a big determining factor for guys coming in hard to home plate, back when you could do that, of course. He took many a big hit behind the plate, but still recovered and put up monster numbers despite numerous concussions. His continued snubbing is absurd and laughable, if it weren’t such a sad comment on the state of the HOF.
I loved Piazza, but to consider him one of the top defensive catchers is something that could only be accomplished by staring at a spreadsheet and mismanaging the numbers.
I don’t think he was awful — I think he was a very smart guy, fully in the game — but he had no quickness, no great arm. I watched Grote for many years; I don’t care what the numbers say about Jerry Grote. When a pitcher started to piss Jerry off, miss high with curve, whatever, Grote used to fire that ball back to the pitcher, harder than he received it. Get it together, bro. He commanded the plate.
On stolen bases, to me the key is stolen base attempts. Forget percentage thrown out. The attempts tell you a lot about how much they respect the catcher. Some guys, you are just reluctant to try it. Of course, yes, the pitchers are part of that equation too, farther contributing to the unreliability of the numbers. Too much noise, not enough signal.
I can’t attest to the veracity of the statement, but I heard that with a potential base stealer on first Grote only wanted fastballs. Even if true, he was a tremendous defensive presence behind the plate.
As for Piazza, he certainly was much better than Mackey Sasser. Actually, I always felt that with the exception of his throwing to second, he was a credible receiver who worked well with his pitchers. He blocked the ball well as well as the plate when it was needed.
As a hitter, he was the best hitting catcher I ever saw (that includes Yogi and Campy in his prime).
When someone would say to me that Piazza wasn’t good defensively, I would always say “When does Piazza ever get a passed ball? It seems like “never”. I can’t remember the last one he had.”
At the end of his career, when we had other catchers in there, they immediately started in with the passed balls and no announcer (that I ever heard) pointed that out, and gave Piazza his due.
I never could understand why the Mets insisted on trying to convert him to be a first baseman when it was apparent that it wasn’t going to work. Your article supports what a folly this was. It was a shabby public relations move when the Mets let him sign with San Diego for $1.25M in 2006. To add insult to injury, Mike had a 122 OPS and 22 home runs that year. Imagine he and LaDuca splitting time. I always felt that Piazza should have retired as a Met.