Who is the Best Offensive Catcher in the National League?
In 2005 Omar Minaya, the New York Mets general manager, made a big splash in his debut year with the Mets by signing Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez, two bonafide superstars, to long term contracts. The team made some pretty good strides with their new superstars and rising stars like David Wright and Jose Reyes. Like any good GM it wasn’t good enough for Minaya, he wanted more, he wanted to put together a ball club that was a serious contend. He wanted a ball club that would that would get all the headlines instead of the cross town rivals, the New York Yankees. He traded for a slugger Carlos Delgado. He brought in Duaner Sanchez and Jorge Julio to improve the middle relief. He even brought in some good veteran bench players like Julio Franco and Jose Valentin to add experience and leadership. There was still one move he had to make though, the hardest decision a team ever has to make. He let the New York Mets most beloved offensive player ever, Mike Piazza, become a free agent.
It was clearly the right thing to do. As much as the Mets fan love Piazza they saw him deteriorating right in front of their eyes. Mike had once hit .362, an unbelievable batting average for a catcher, but his batting average had now dipped down to .251. Mike started the season as the fourth batter, the most prominent spot in the lineup. Then he slowly slipped down to fifth because Cliff Floyd was having a monstrous season. Eventually, he even dropped down to sixth in the batting order when the Mets decided that David Wright, with less than a year under his belt, should be batting in the RBI spot instead of Piazza. Piazza became a free agent and signed a two year deal with the San Diego Padres.
The New York Mets ended up replacing Piazza with Paul Lo Duca. Paul has been a great addition. In the past month he’s been really hot, but he’s mainly there to just make contact. With probably the most exciting base runner in the Majors batting before him Paul Lo Duca’s job is just to make sure Jose Reyes advances a base. He’s done a good job of that, good enough that he was the starter in the All Star game. Backing up Lo Duca in the All Star game was Brian McCann of the Atlanta Braves. McCann was injured for part of the season so he doesn’t have enough at bats to qualify him for the batting title, but if he did qualify he would be leading the league in batting. McCann also has some pretty decent power numbers with 14 homeruns and 52 RBI. Some people were saying Michael Barrett deserved to be a catcher in the All Star game. Barrett was hitting in the .360s at the time and is still up there at .327. So now that Mike Piazza is over the hill or past his prime or whatever phrase you want to use to indicate he’s not good anymore, who is the best offensive catcher in the NL. I’ll tell you who. It’s Mike Piazza.
Last year Mike looked like he was done so everybody forgot about him. He’s quietly been putting together another great season in his Hall of Fame career. His batting average is back up to .299 and has been rising consistently for a while now. He’ll surely finish the season over .300 for the 10th time in his career. Mike, despite any fanfare or recognition from most of the media, still hits more homeruns, 18, than any catcher in the Majors. His 51 RBI do not lead the all catchers, it ranks third, but the numbers don’t always tell the whole story. How much pressure is there for Paul Lo Duca to succeed? Very little. How much pressure is there on Michael Barrett? Not much with Aramis Ramirez and Derek Lee on the team. Brian McCann has it easy too; all the focus is on the Joneses. These other players on those teams also provide a lot of protection for Lo Duca, Barrett, and McCann and they also provide them with more run and RBI chances. Mike doesn’t have that. The second best player on the Padres, Brian Giles, is on pace to hit just 11 homeruns and knock in 85 RBI. Giles also batted third most of the season. Which means Barrett got to knock in guys like Ramirez and Lee, Lo Duca gets bat ahead of Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, and David Wright, McCann bats over the Joneses and Piazza gets Brian Giles? It doesn’t seem fair. Let’s not forget that
PETCO
Park
in
San Diego
is a notoriously hard park to put offensive numbers.
No disrespect to Paul Lo Duca, Michael Barrett, or Brian McCann but Mike Piazza continues to put up as good a stat line as any of them but he does with the pressure of being the star, little protection from the rest of the lineup, tough field conditions, and let’s not forget Mike doesn’t even play as often as the other guys do. So while Mike is getting little to no press this year he is still the best offensive catcher in the National League. To the rest of the catchers in the National League, don’t worry Mike has to retire eventually.
