For the Record

Mike Piazza made his MLB debut in 1992, and played in 1912 games until his retirement after the 2007 season. Over his 7745 plate appearances, he had 2127 hits, including 344 doubles and 427 home runs, and drew 759 walks against 1113 strikeouts, good for a batting line of .308/.377/.545. That gives him a wRC+ of 140. He drove in 1335 runs and scored 1048. Piazza was a catcher for at least part of 1630 of those games, 1602 of which as the starting catcher (the rest of his time split between first base and the designated hitter role), and while his 23% caught stealing mark was well below the league average of 31% and he wasn't the world's best pitch-blocker either, he is thought to have been one of the best catchers at history in framing pitches to produce extra called strikes, and his pitchers loved throwing to him. Add it all up and Piazza was worth 59.4 bWAR and 63.5 fWAR, the sixth- and fifth-highest marks all-time for a catcher, respectively (in both cases virtually tied with Yogi Berra). Versus a more stringent baseline, Piazza put up 35.7 bWAA and 38.4 fWAA*, and during the productive portion of his career, from 1993 through 2003, he accumulated 38 bWAA and 41.2 fWAA. Piazza also hit .242/.301/.458 over 133 post-season plate appearances, hitting six home runs and eight doubles and racking up 15 RBIs and 14 runs scored, and leading the New York Mets to the 2000 World Series with a monstrous .412/.545/.941 batting line in the NLCS and put up a .636 slugging percentage against the Yankees. Earlier today, in his third year on the ballot, Piazza received votes from 69.9% of Hall of Fame voters, just shy of the 75% necessary for enshrinement.

Craig Biggio made his MLB debut in 1988, and played in 2850 games until his retirement after the 2007 season. Over his 12504 plate appearances, he had 3060 hits, including 668 doubles and 291 home runs, and drew 1160 walks against 1753 strikeouts, good for a batting line of .281/.363/.433. That give shim a wRC+ of 115. He drove in 1175 runs and scored 1844. He also stole 414 bases, and was caught stealing 124 times. Like Piazza he came up as a catcher and caught in 428 games, but moved off the position. Biggio spent 363 games in the outfield but the vast bulk of his time at second base, appearing there in 1989 games. Though he won four Gold Gloves at second base from 1994 through 1997, available defensive metrics view him as having been mediocre at every position he played. Add it all up and Biggio was worth 65.1 WAR (per both sources), the twelfth- and tenth-highest totals for a second baseman ever, respectively. He accrued 28.7 bWAA and 24.3 fWAA, and during the productive portion of his career, from 1989 through 2001, he accumulated 35.6 bWAA and 30.0 fWAA. He also hit .234/.295/.323 over 185 post-season plate appearances, hitting two home runs and nine doubles with 11 RBIs and 23 runs scored, and was part of the 2005 Houston Astros team that made it to the World Series. (Biggio hit .295/.343/.377 in that post-season.) Earlier today, in his third year on the ballot, Biggio received the votes of 82.7% of the voters, and will therefore be inducted into the Hall of Fame later this year.

Mike Piazza was a better baseball player than Craig Biggio. This is, I think, incontrovertible. Piazza was the undisputed best-hitting catcher of all time. Biggio was a decent hitter and a decent baserunner, and maybe a decent fielder if we believe the people voting on Gold Gloves (though not if we believe the admittedly fairly primitive defensive metrics--in fact, both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference have Biggio with more negative defensive value at his positions, and at less valuable positions), but nothing special in any regard. But Biggio wasn't a catcher (or at least, unlike Piazza, he had to stop being one early in his career), and so he played a lot more games than Piazza and stuck around long enough after he was still good to get 3000 hits. Also, because he wasn't renowned for his power, he manages to escape the pall of the Steroid Era, which Piazza apparently doesn't despite the abject lack of anything remotely resembling evidence that he cheated. There is a cogent argument that Craig Biggio should not be a Hall of Famer. There is no cogent argument that Mike Piazza should not be a Hall of Famer. For at least a year, Biggio but not Piazza will be in the Hall. That's absurd, and the writers had better not make the travesty last any further years.

Piazza 2016!



*FanGraphs does not actually give a Wins Above Average statistic, but it gives Runs Above Average statistics for the four major components of WAR (hitting, baserunning, fielding, and position), and I calculated the listed figures from those.

How I Would Vote on the 2014 Hall of Fame Ballot

Today is something like the last day for Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) members to submit their votes for 2014 induction into the MLB Hall of Fame. This year's ballot is perhaps a uniquely crowded one, because the past few years have seen far more deserving players enter the ballot than depart it through induction, mostly because people have been failing to vote for suspected steroid users or, in some cases, for anyone at all from the "Steroid Era." The names on the ballot can be seen here (note that that page will be updated with the actual vote tallies once those are released), along with their history on past ballots. Now, I obviously don't have a vote, but I have an opinion, so this post will say who I would vote for if I could vote for anyone. This is an unusually complicated question. Normally it's just a matter of looking over the names on the ballot and deciding for each of them whether they deserve induction. But pretty much everyone who isn't a hypocritical curmudgeon admits that there are more than 10 deserving players on this year's ballot, which is a problem since one can only vote for 10 players. So first I'll say which of the eligible players I think are deserving, and then I'll say who I'd actually vote for, as a strategic/game-theoretic matter.

No, the Big Contracts Aren't the Problem

I was just listening to an interview by Jeff Wilpon in which he discussed the Mets' likely strategy for this off-season. His message was that the team is unlikely to look to build primarily through free agency, that they will probably shy away from massive contracts, that when they've gotten in trouble in the past it's been because of too many big contracts, and that they might try to emulate the model of the Red Sox from this past off-season, when Boston signed a large number of mid-level free agents to short but multi-year deals. This gave them depth, an awful lot of actually solid/good baseball players who could form a decent mix even if some of them got injured, which some of them have, and the Red Sox are leading their division. Of course, another AL division leader is the Detroit Tigers, who recently signed both Prince Fielder and Justin Verlander to $200 million deals, and the other leader is the Oakland Athletics, who never sign any free agents 'cause they don't have the money. So, you know. Perhaps the empirical verdict isn't so clear.

But I was struck by Wilpon's description of the Mets' own past. Is it true that they've gotten in trouble from their super-sized contracts in the past? I don't think so. Here's the thing: the Mets have given out three enormous free agent contracts in their history. All three were among the better signings in team history. It has been, in fact, those more mid-level contracts that haven't worked out, and that have created baggage for the team.