is Mike Piazza under rated?
craig44
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I was thinking about the hof elections coming up and it seems that Piazza is under rated. Shouldn't he be considered the greatest catcher ever? People rag on the defense, but his fielding percentage was right at league average. I think that people look at catching defense as how many caught stealing a catcher had. I think Piazzas defense was good not great. He didn't have a great arm, but the value of stolen bases has been debated. I would say that most believe him to be the greatest offensive force ever at the position, I would think that whatever perceived defensive deficiencies would be more than made up by his offense. What do you think?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
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I would rate everyone below above Piazza, all were better defensively too:
Yogi Berra 3 MVPs, 10 rings as a player
Mickey Cochrane. 2 MVPs, 3 rings, retired at 34!
John Bench, 2 MVPs, 2 rings
Bill Dickey, 8 rings as a player
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I was thinking about the hof elections coming up and it seems that Piazza is under rated. Shouldn't he be considered the greatest catcher ever? People rag on the defense, but his fielding percentage was right at league average. I think that people look at catching defense as how many caught stealing a catcher had. I think Piazzas defense was good not great. He didn't have a great arm, but the value of stolen bases has been debated. I would say that most believe him to be the greatest offensive force ever at the position, I would think that whatever perceived defensive deficiencies would be more than made up by his offense. What do you think?
Sorry, but Piazza was a terrible catcher. Caught stealing isn't everything, but when you are as bad as Piazza at it then everyone and their grandmother steals on you. He led the league in SB allowed 10 times, errors 4 times and passed balls twice. His 155 SB allowed in 1996 is the modern era (1920-) record, and handily so. His zone runs as a catcher are -61; that may also be a record.
That said, he was a great hitter. Was he a better hitter than Bench? It's close, and your answer is going to depend on just how much easier you think it is to hit when Piazza played vs. when Bench played. I think Bench was better, but just a little bit. But even if you think Piazza was a little better, or even more than a little bit better, Bench's fielding was so much better than Piazza's that he's still going to be the better overall player. Similarly, I think Berra was also better than Piazza. But that's it; I'd rank Piazza at #3.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
mark
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......
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Piazza was not a disaster behind the plate. Most fans feel that a catchers defense starts and stops with caught stealing numbers. Probably because it is easily measured and is a very visible part of a catchers game. That was piazzas weak spot. He wasn't a terrible receiver, and anecdotally, his pitching staffs liked throwing to him.
I strongly disagree. He was a terrible catcher. Maybe we were watching hundreds of different Piazza caught games.
He would have made a great DH
mark
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......
Piazza was a terrible catcher.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Roy Campanella was a much better defensive catcher than Piazza, and as a hitter had more power. He should be no lower than third on anybody's list of best catchers.
Campanella was a very good hitter, but he played in one of the easiest hitter's parks in history, and he was 33 the last year he hit as well as league average. Piazza was better. Campanella was a lot better defensively, though, and he's certainly a reasonable choice for #3. That's where Bill James has him (he's got Piazza in 5th, also behind Cochrane).
People jump on these bandwagons (like Larry Walkers home park hitting advantage) and get great joy in diminishing a players accomplishments.
I would say Piazza's offense MORE than made up for his defensive problems. He was at the top of a LOT of the bad defense categories, but as the OP points out a couple of errors a year less and he would have looked a lot better. Looking at his SB allowed as a catcher, I have always heard the runner steals on the pitcher, not the catcher. One extra guy steals on you every 12 games and you stink, even if your lifetime OPS is .922? 28th all time in SLG%!
Please notice he was top three in games caught 9 times.
Certainly NOT in the conversation as greatest catcher ever! Possibly in the conversation as greatest hitting catcher ever.
Defensively he was bad, no argument. Offensively he was awesome.
People jump on these bandwagons (like Larry Walkers home park hitting advantage) and get great joy in diminishing a players accomplishments.
I would say Piazza's offense MORE than made up for his defensive problems. He was at the top of a LOT of the bad defense categories, but as the OP points out a couple of errors a year less and he would have looked a lot better. Looking at his SB allowed as a catcher, I have always heard the runner steals on the pitcher, not the catcher. One extra guy steals on you every 12 games and you stink, even if your lifetime OPS is .922? 28th all time in SLG%!
Please notice he was top three in games caught 9 times.
Certainly NOT in the conversation as greatest catcher ever! Possibly in the conversation as greatest hitting catcher ever.
Good post
Mark
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......
Defensively he was bad, no argument. Offensively he was awesome.
People jump on these bandwagons (like Larry Walkers home park hitting advantage) and get great joy in diminishing a players accomplishments.
I would say Piazza's offense MORE than made up for his defensive problems. He was at the top of a LOT of the bad defense categories, but as the OP points out a couple of errors a year less and he would have looked a lot better. Looking at his SB allowed as a catcher, I have always heard the runner steals on the pitcher, not the catcher. One extra guy steals on you every 12 games and you stink, even if your lifetime OPS is .922? 28th all time in SLG%!
Compared to Bench, Piazza gave up 790 more steals in 112 fewer games. Piazza gave up nearly a steal game. Bench gave one up about every 3 games. And Bench's numbers were even better than that before his last two years as a catcher.
BIG difference.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
So how do we explain the increased performance of piazzas pitching staffs while he was behind the plate? All the extra stolen bases allowed are figured into that half run decrease in era. Could it be that the impact of stolen bases is quite overrated?
Maybe his back up was even worse
mark
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......
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
If I agreed that Piazza was much better on offense then I'd agree with your conclusion.
Bench had .030 offensive WAR per game, Piazza .034. Other stats are similar; they all show that Piazza was better, but not a lot better.
On defense, you have to keep in mind that 99% of what a catcher does is catch a ball thrown directly at him. That's not hard, and 100% of catchers do it correctly 99% of the time. As a result, stats like fielding % and range factor are close to meaningless for catchers. Of the plays that they make that actually show skill, throwing out runners is, by far, the most common and the most important. Zone runs reflect that, WAR reflects that and Win Shares reflects that; in other words, everyone who has ever tried to put a number to the value of a catcher has acknowledged that. And everyone who has ever put a number to the value of a catcher has concluded that Piazza had to look up to see "bad". As for "stealing off the pitcher", please note that Piazza was terrible in LA, was terrible in NY, then finished his catching career in SD with one terrible season. In 2000, when the league average CS% was 32%, Piazza threw out 23% while his backup, Todd Pratt, threw out 39%.
Piazza was a little bit better hitter than Bench, and he was a tremendously worse catcher. Overall, Bench was better.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Mickey Mantle used to give Berra a hard time about how "easy" it was to sit back and catch a ball thrown right to you. Yogi and Whitey Ford decided to let Mickey call the game from center field one day. Mick standing straight up was a fast ball bending over was for a curve. It was a close game and by the 7th inning Mantle approached Berra and said it wasn't that easy, Berra should take over.
Thought I would share that, I thought it was a cute story.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
As far as hitting, come on. Bench's ops+ was 126 piazza's was 142.
This is true, but it doesn't capture that it was harder to be better than average when Bench played than it was when Piazza played. 142/126 = 13% better; I think it's probably more like 5%.
And while you are clearly convinced that "stolen bases just aren't that valuable", to convince me you need to define "that valuable". Stolen bases are worth what they're worth, and WAR and Win Shares and zone runs all take the known value of a stolen base into account. I suspect that if a pitcher gave up 100 doubles you'd see pretty clearly that he was a whole lot worse than the pitcher who gave up 100 singles, even if they all came with the bases empty. Because the first pitcher would give up a whole lot more runs than the second pitcher. Piazza behind the plate turned pitchers who gave up 100 singles into pitchers who gave up 100 doubles. Whether or not that is "that" important depends on what you mean by "that"; but there's no denying that it's important.
As far as how valuable stolen bases are. I only have data from 2009-2013. In those years, about 25% of steals directly led to runs. I don't have data from before that, but if it was anywhere close, the extra stolen bases Piazza allowed accounted for an extra run every 8 or 9 games.
I agree with you that the bulk of catching duties are performed almost at the same level by different catchers 99% of the time. So the real diferentiating factor amongst defense with catchers is holding base runners. If the value of a stolen base is around .25 of a run, the net difference between Bench's brilliance and Piazza amounts to Mike costing his team an extra run over every 8 or 9 games. I can live with that if I can have his bat in the lineup.
Caught stealing is very flashy and the players who where best at it tend to stick in people's memories. I agree, it is fun to watch, but I don't think the actual, net advantage is greater than having an offensive juggernaut like Piazza in the lineup.
Give me piazza every time.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
As a rule, I don't refer to anyone in the HOF as "under rated" (which doesn't mean you can't), or anyone likely to make the HOF shortly after they're eligible. When I think of a player who is under rated, I don't think about an argument about exactly how great a player was if everyone agrees that he was great. I think of arguments about great players who others argue wasn't great, or possibly wasn't even good.
The most under rated players in history include Darell Evans, Gene Tenace and Ron Fairly. They are all players that I have mentioned 1,000 times, not because I liked them when they played - I barely noticed them when they played - but because they are among the most under rated players in history. You can always learn something looking into any player's stats, but there is a limit to how much can be learned looking at Mike Piazza or Johnny Bench and trying to decide precisely where in the top 5 all-time catchers they reside. But there is a TON to be learned looking at Evans/Tenace/Fairly if you've never thought of them before as great players. They're not top 5 players, and only Evans was a HOF-level player, but they were all much, much better than they are generally given credit for.
I do think that default answer is wrong. Not because I am a Piazza fan boy, but because I think he was better. The advantage Bench had throwing is not nearly the advantage Piazza had at the plate.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I see what you mean about different people's view on under rated players. Maybe I should have named the thread "is piazza the greatest catcher of all time" at any rate, many people have this default answer Of Johnny Bench to the question of who is the greatest catcher. I guess that is where my mind was at.
I do think that default answer is wrong. Not because I am a Piazza fan boy, but because I think he was better. The advantage Bench had throwing is not nearly the advantage Piazza had at the plate.
I really WANT to agree with you, but I can't. Catcher is primarily a defensive position with offense a bonus, kind of like shortstop. Piazza might not have been horrible, but he was at the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) of the list in many of the defensive problem categories.
In Minnesota we had a pretty good hitting catcher a few years ago Brian Harper, I liked him, but he was not too good behind the plate and they couldn't wait to get rid of him. Joe Mauer was, for a while, looking like the real deal. Great hitter (although not much power) and great defensive catcher, but he couldn't hold up physically and is now at first base.
In my opinion Berra and Bench are the best with Bench having a higher peak and Berra the longer period of great play. Campenella was as good, but with a shortened career.
I don't think Piazza is going to get any votes for best catcher of all time.
I will say that he gets too much criticism and agree with your original thought that he is under rated.
Part of it I think is the expected answers of bench and berra for best catcher of all time. Kind of like answering Wagner for greatest SS (which is probably the right answer) Everyone is so used to the "correct" answers it is a bit hard to see the forrest for the trees.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
But even comparing him to the best, the net result is an extra run every 8 or 9 games.
Saving a run on defense is worth exactly the same as producing a run on offense. A run every 8 or 9 games (20 runs a year) is huge; it's the difference between Frank Robinson and Reggie Smith among great hitters, or the difference between Hack Wilson and Davey Johnson among less great hitters. I'm not dismissing your arguments for Piazza being better than Bench, but I'm also not convinced you're really seeing just how much better Bench was on defense.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
If it is so huge, it didn't seem to affect the pitchers who were throwing to him as their era's were half a run lower when pitching to Mike. He must have made up for it in other facets of the position. Maybe it had to do with the 90 fewer wild pitches he let through compared to bench.
Maybe if Bench caught the same pitchers as Piazza did he would have had 200 fewer WP's and the staffs era would have been lowered by a full run.
mark
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......
Lets go by dollars
In 1993 he was making $126,000, he was way underrated that year.
In 2003 he was making $16 million I think he was way overrated that year .
His 2003 salary was 125 times his 1993 salary
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Joe, it is a catchers job to keep balls in the dirt in front of them. Just like it is a first basemans job to scoop balls in the dirt. Piazza was better at that than Bench was.
No he wasn't. You can't possibly tell me know which wild pitches were in the dirt and which sailed over a catchers head and which were a mile wide.
I don't know about catchers before 1967 as I didn't see them play ( and can only rely on historians and evaluating stats) . However I did see Bench play a ton and I saw Piazza even more. Piazza stunk as a catcher. Bench excelled. That I saw with my own eyes. Piazza could hit a ton granted. He was a liability behind the plate no matter how you try to spin it. Sorry
I have to admire your spirit
mark
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......
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
No, piazza didn't stink at catching or game calling. He stunk at throwing out runners.
Yeah, and Mario Mendoza didn't stink as a hitter; it was only the putting the bat on the ball part that he stunk at; he was good at everything else.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
... just ask the pitchers piazza caught for. They had a .54 lower era when Mike caught them.
I don't know enough about this stat to dismiss it entirely, but what I do know of it is that it appears to be statistically useless (it has no predictive value, i.e., it is randomly distributed once you control for the pitchers). If you are aware of an analysis that claims to show otherwise, please point me to it. If you are aware of a database with complete figures for enough catchers that I can test it myself, please point me to that.
My guess is that most every starting catcher has a positive ERA differential over his backup. First, because he's the starter and will generally be better than the backup(s). Second, because the starting catcher is going to get to catch the best pitchers more often, while the backup catcher will disproportionately catch the worse pitchers. If, for a simplified example, you have a team with two catchers and two pitchers, and pitcher 1's ERA is 2.00 and pitcher 2's ERA is 6.00. If catcher 1 catches pitcher 1 for 200 innings and pitcher 2 for 100 innings, his "ERA" will be 3.33. If catcher 2 catches pitcher 2 for 100 innings and pitcher 1 for 50 innings, his "ERA" will be 4.67. That differential, as large as it is, is meaningless - both pitchers had the same ERA regardless who was catching. In fact, catcher 2 could have had an ERA of 4.00 - still higher than catcher 1's - and it would have indicated, if anything, that he was better than catcher 1. In other words, looking at the raw difference between each catcher's "ERA" didn't tell us anything, because we didn't control for the pitchers. And, as I said, once we control for the pitchers, I don't think that anyone has found anything meaningful in looking at the catcher's "ERA".
A more real world example, but reversed, of this could probably be found with Tim McCarver. McCarver was never a great catcher, but he wasn't terrible. For whatever reason, Steve Carlton loved to pitch to him, though, so McCarver spent a huge share of his innings on the Phillies catching Carlton. Since Carlton was the best pitcher on the Phillies, I assume that McCarver had a better "ERA" than Boone, who mostly caught for everyone else. Boone was a much better catcher than McCarver, especially the old, beaten down McCarver on the Phillies. Looking at their "ERA" differential would have not only hidden that, it would have misled you into thinking McCarver was better.
So, with respect to Piazza, when you say that "they" had a 0.54 better ERA when he was catching, I don't think that you know this. It could be that "they", each and every pitcher, had the same ERA when Piazza was catching; it could even be that each and every one had a worse ERA when Piazza was catching. Or it could be that each pitcher's ERA was within normal random variation, some higher and some lower, when Piazza was catching. If you can tell me which it was, and if it supports Piazza, then I'll consider it. If you can't say which it was, then you can't say that the stat supports Piazza, and you shouldn't be citing it as if it does.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Well, I think we're at an impasse about the value of catcher defense. What about turning the discussion to offense. I think piazza is the better hitter. In what aspect was bench better. I fail to see one.
I agree that Piazza was the better hitter; and I think you agree that Bench was better defensively. Where we disagree is that I think Bench was "more better" on defense than Piazza was on offense, and you don't think Bench's defense makes up the gap on offense. I also agree that if it could be shown that one catcher got improved performance out of his pitchers, that that would be worth considering as part of his defense. But I don't think anyone has ever demonstrated that, after controlling for the pitchers and also controlling for the catcher's own contribution throwing out runners (since that would be double-counting).
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I can't find any part of hitting that bench was better at. Piazza was better at getting on base, hitting and hitting with power. I think there was significant enough difference that I would sacrifice the extra defense for the boost in hitting.
Piazza was better at both of those, producing the OPS+ gap of 142 to 126. I can't quantify it exactly, but I'll point out that it was harder to be better than league average when Bench played than when Piazza played; it doesn't close that 16 point gap, but it narrows it. I think, base on those two metrics alone, Piazza was about 10% better than Bench. But those two metrics don't measure everything, there's also baserunning, and Bench was better at that. The WAR metrics credit Piazza as costing his teams 56 runs due to baserunning (including DPs) and Bench costing his teams 17 runs. That's not huge, but it's not trivial either. And looking at each of their 10-year primes (which appears to be fair to both of them), Bench caught 137 games a year (and played first or elsewhere 12 additional games per year), while Piazza caught 130 games a year (and played first or elsewhere and additional 7 games per year). So Bench picks up a percent or two with baserunning, and 5 points or so by staying healthy, and Piazza's 10-point initial advantage becomes 3 or 4.
You don't have to buy any of this, although you should accept at least some of it, and start off with Piazza being 16% better than Bench on offense, and I think you should still conclude that Bench was the better overall player. But Piazza wasn't 16% better than Bench on offense, he was maybe 4% better, and Bench not only closes the gap with defense he sails pretty far past.
I also think that it is a huge stretch to say that some era's are harder than others to excel in, or be better than average in. I think you are trying to bend the data here to try and narrow the offensive gap between bench and piazza. Every era has stars and superstars. Just because bench didn't excel quite enough on offense to prove your point doesn't mean you can arbitrarily subtract points from piazza for that, or say it was easier to be above average in his era. Way to subjective and no way for you to substantiate it. So we are left with how each player performed against their peers. Piazza outperformed his peers offensively at a greater clip than bench outperformed his peers. That difference was significant enough to outweigh benches advantage on defense, so Piazza was the more valuable player to his team.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I think it is a real stretch to say that either of these players was better than the other on the basepaths. Neither was a real threat to steal. In fact, bench accounted for 23 more outs than piazza via caught stealing. Outs are worth more than a steal. Over 15 years, piazza grounded into 27 more double plays. Two per year. Not significant. I question a stat that places one of these players over the other. Both were pretty futile on the basepaths.
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Had I said that Bench was a lot better, that would have been a stretch. That he was better is pretty obvious, though. I said he picked up 1% or 2% for baserunning and I stand by that. Using your numbers, 2 DPS a year is 4 outs a year, which is 1%-2% of a season's worth of outs. If you've got a better number share it, but you're saying that "not much" is exactly the same thing as "none" and that's just wrong.
I also think that it is a huge stretch to say that some era's are harder than others to excel in, or be better than average in. I think you are trying to bend the data here to try and narrow the offensive gap between bench and piazza. Every era has stars and superstars. Just because bench didn't excel quite enough on offense to prove your point doesn't mean you can arbitrarily subtract points from piazza for that, or say it was easier to be above average in his era. Way to subjective and no way for you to substantiate it. So we are left with how each player performed against their peers. Piazza outperformed his peers offensively at a greater clip than bench outperformed his peers. That difference was significant enough to outweigh benches advantage on defense, so Piazza was the more valuable player to his team.
It's difficult to quantify, but it's not at all a huge stretch to say that in some eras it's easier than in other eras to separate one's self from the average. I've made the point dozens of times in the past, so your implication that I'm doing so here because it helps Bench is incorrect (and insulting). And again, I didn't claim that it made all that much difference. My guess was that it closed the gap by 6%; if there is ever a way to accurately quantify this effect, I've got money that says my estimate was conservative.
Finally, you completely ignored my third point which was that Bench was able to play more games per season than Piazza was. Obviously, that has value, and obviously that favors Bench.
I'm doing my best to provide numbers to back up the position I'm taking. If you disagree with any of my numbers then tell me what you think the correct number should be and how you arrived at that number. No matter how many times you state that Bench's defensive advantage was less than Piazza's offensive advantage, it's not going to be persuasive without numbers of some kind.