[Atocep]

Originally Posted by miked

Piazza was a great hitter, but a phenomenally bad catcher. Laughably bad. If he were a 1B (which he would have been suited for) he would not be close to HoF. And he's a PED-using pussy

The problem is there's more data that supports the notion that Piazza was an underrated defensive catcher than there is that shows he was a poor defensive catcher.

Here's a quote from a Bill James article

http://www.billjamesonline.com/shoul...hall_of_fame_/

Craig Wright wrote an excellent article in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2009 called Piazza, Hall of Fame Catcher. He did a detailed sabermetric study that showed that hitters had a .723 OPS with Piazza behind the plate and a .748 OPS with other catchers. This 25-point differential is highly significant. In further studies that we did in The Fielding Bible—Volume II, we found that Piazza saved at least 20 to 70 runs more than an average catcher defensively, depending on the technique that we used.

And here's a Rob Neyer article that discusses the same thing:

So about Mike Piazza's defense ... - Baseball Nation