Story here.
So, Hall of Famer? What do you folks think about his career? Should he have retired sooner? Later? Discuss.
I loved the guy when he was a Dodger, without question. We’ve been very fortunate with the stream of catchers that have come through the organization in the last 15 years.
Hall of Famer no question. All future catchers will be based on some hybrid idea of Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez (for example, Joe Mauer).
As a life long Mets fan, I will definitely miss Mike Piazza. Happy trails pizano, may you have a good retirement.
Hall of Famer, in my mind.
He was the best hitting catcher in major league history. He probably wasn’t the best OVERALL catcher ever, of course. The knock against him is that he wasn’t very good defensively. That’s true, but he frankly wasn’t as bad as people seem to remember, and a few extra stolen bases are way more than offset by the destruction wrought by his bat. Overall I think he’s still easily one of the ten best catchers ever.
As to whether he retired too early or too late, that’s not my call to make.
Good luck, Mike. I always liked watching you play.
HoF without a doubt. He probably sould have pulled the plug a couple of years ago, and retired as a Met. But it’s not like he was holding on for dear life to a game he couldn’t play anymore. It’s time, so he made the decision.
I’d say he goes in. His numbers certainly justify inclusion, though it might take a year, depending on how the Hall feels that year.
Hell of a hitter, though. I’d have hated to face him.
No question a HOF’er. Might even get a boost from being a clean player in the steroid era.
At least I think. I’ve never heard serious rumors that he was juicing.
Anyway, probably the best hitting catcher ever.
No doubt Hall of Famer. I’ve heard it said he called a good game, too, which would also arguably make up for his defensive weaknesses. What do our superior baseball minds think about Piazza from that perspective?
I don’t know about the superior baseball minds, but I’ll weigh in. It’d be really difficult to determine, objectively, if a guy like Piazza “Calls a good game” or not because that just shows up in the pitcher’s stats. How can you tell if a pitcher’s ERA was good because of Piazza or because of the pitcher?
The first solution I could think of would be to compare Piazza to other catchers catching the same pitchers, but then you just don’t have enough information to go on. Backups don’t catch that many games.
It’s really, really hard to rate catcher defense.
Definite first ballot HOFer in my view. Hard to argue that he’s not the best hitting catcher of all time (well, leaving Josh Gibson out of the conversation).
He was at least an above average hitter in all but his last year, so it’s hard to argue that he should have retired sooner.
Just perusing his baseball reference page, my goodness, his 1997 was far better than I remember. .362/.431/.638 as a catcher? Yowza.
One odd thing - he had 8 career triples. 3 for the Dodgers in five-plus seasons, 2 for the Mets in his 7 1/2 years there (both in 2002). And then one each for Oakland and San Diego in his one season with each time - and one with Florida in his five game stint with the Marlins.
He is clearly a Hall of Famer. By the time he got to the Mets he was a below average defensive catcher, but his offense was still great. Pre-Mets he was an average defensive catcher with a great bat. I agree he is top 10 all time.
All that said, I would take Pudge Rodriguez over him.
Jim
It’s always difficult to look past a player’s most recent performance when judging against the greats, but Piazza is most definitely a HOFer IMO. And I’m a rabid Met hater (but that’s as an organization, not against individual players.) History will look on him very well. Hell of a career.