Piazza and Carter versus Berra and Munson
Goldenage
Posts: 3,278 ✭✭✭✭✭
New York versus New York.
You have one choice. Choose the best pair.
0
Goldenage
Posts: 3,278 ✭✭✭✭✭
Comments
Great question!
Berra and Munson.
Berra ranks right up there with Bench (and sometimes better) in a lot of rating measurements.
Munson was also great, but had a shorter career.
I think they were the "best" pair, but it also kind of depends on what you mean by "best". If you put a lot of weight on longevity, Piazza/Carter are better.
Gary Carter played a LOT more games at C that any of these guys and his OPS+ was about the same as Munson's.
Since the title for the position is "catcher" I rated Piazza pretty low even though he was a great hitter.
You’ve got 4 of the top 10 catchers of all time from the city of N.Y. I’m leaning towards Shea, but understand those pulling for the Bronx.
I suppose they rank with Berra being the best of the group by a fairly large margin. But then again there is a large gap between Munson at #4 and Carter and Piazza at 2 & 3. So pick your poison.
The good news is Dallas will be around fairly shortly to tell me if I am wrong
If your purely going by WAR it's Carter and Piazza in a landslide I would guess.
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Although I love Munson, don' t forget about 11x AS and HOF'er Bill Dickey for the Yankees...
How are we judging here? Based on what they did in their careers or what they did in NY? Piazza & Carter both had their best years elsewhere and played less than half their careers in NY. If we judge based on the NY years, it's Berra & Munson in a squash.
The only thing I'm going to challenge is Berra being on top "by a fairly large margin". He's on top, but the gap down to Carter isn't all that large.
It's the gap down to Munson, as you said, that I think ends it - it's huge, and Carter/Piazza "win" by a fairly large margin because of it. As bbiv said, though, if we're setting up a Shea/Bronx match-up, Dickey is the #2 Bronx catcher, and Berra/Dickey vs. Carter/Piazza really has no "right" answer. If Piazza had known how to play catcher then the Shea duo would walk away with it, but he didn't, so I think a good case could be made for either pair.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I can live with that.
Growing up I always thought of Munson on par with Fisk, Fosse and thought Bill Freehan was better just on the eye test and who I would rather have. Then again I hated the Yanks growing up and I was born in Detroit
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Thanks. Career numbers.
Some may argue that Berra was the rock behind those great Yankees teams of the 1950's and early 1960's.
Yes Mantle was great of course, but i happen to agree with that assessment of Yogi Berra.
If you haven't read "Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee" by Allen Barra, I highly recommend it. There's a section towards the back that covers just about every metric known to man and Yogi and Bench come out as the best and it's very close.
Bill Dickey taught the position to Berra (he "taught Yogi his experience") and was a superior player to Thurman.
Superior to Thurman ? I’d love to hear why. I can accept superior to Posada, and just a bit better than Munson.
Thurman is the only catcher to ever hit over .300 (.357) in postseason history.
give me the Shea guys. Munson was too big of a drop off. Piazza was such an outlier on offense. he was a beast.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Dickey was widely considered one of the top 4 catchers of all time, along with Bench, Berra and Cochrane.
Bill played 100 or more games 13 times and hit over .300 in 10 of those seasons. with a much higher OPS than Thurman. In Munson's favor, he played more games per year, while Bill seemed to get a lot of time off every other year.
In the 3 years 1937-39 when he was 30-32 years old. and played every day Dickey had an OPS that averaged .961. In his final 3 seasons Munson, at the same age had an OPS of .744,
Thurman was one of my favorite players, but even if you don't take into consideration how much longer Dickey played, Bill was clearly a better hitter.
Harder to tell defensively. Dickey seems to be a slightly better fielder and threw out a higher % of potential base stealers, but not by a wide margin.
Munson did hit well in his 30 post season games, nice, but really doesn't elevate him much to me.
Piazza was a tremendous hitter, but a very very poor defensive player in a very important defensive position.
The question as posed by the OP is a great one for discussion, with Piazza's great hitting and lousy catching and Munson's shortened career being great factors for debate!
Could you do me a favor because I don’t know how. Can you tell me the difference between Dickeys average compared to his peers of the day, compared to Munson and his peers.
I’m assuming that Dickey hit when averages were much higher, or is that incorrect?
I know the relief pitcher was not around as much back then.
I wasn't really looking at his BA, more interested in SLG. Dickey was in the top 6 four times Munson made it once in 1973.
As far as BA Munson was in the top 10 four times and Dickey three times. Both of them were as high as third place......once.
OPS+ also indicates that Dickey was better with 6 seasons above 131 and 3 of them at or above 143. Munson had one season over 126.
The argument gets made that it was "easier" to hit for average during certain eras, but I don't know if that means it was easier or there were just a few more good hitters, or a few less lousy ones.
Look at the hitters that Dickey competed against; Foxx, Gehrig, Greenberg and later DiMaggio and Teddy Ballgame. There was only one great hitter for average during Munson's time; Rod Carew, who was hitting for nearly as high an average as the players in Dickey's time.
The difference could have been there were no great hitters from 1970-80 for average. Oliva was done, Yaz was about done, and George Brett didn't come along until about 1975. Dick Allen was a beast, when interested and Jim Rice had a couple of great years in there. None of these guys were as good as the above mentioned 5.
I like looking at "Top 10" finishes to see if they excelled in their time and here Dickey wins. Not on BA though.
I'm not to park factor too much, but wasn't Yankee Stadium a lot bigger in Dickey's time period?
Same thing with relievers, how on earth can we just decide what their actual effect was on the batters numbers?
Munson's tragic death cut short his wonderful career. Would he have played another 4 (or more) years? Would he have played less games and had better numbers? People here have said he was basically "washed up". There's no way of knowing for sure.
We are talking about some outstanding catchers, sometimes it does come down to who did it for a longer period. I'm certainly not bashing Munson, I thought he was a great catcher!