Mike Piazza currently appears on 78.9 percent of the vote based on 119 Hall of Fame ballots that have been made public, as tracked by Baseball Think Factory.
That figure is down from the 79.5 percent on Monday, when 83 ballots had been tabulated. However, it is still slightly ahead of the 75 percent threshold Piazza needs to get into Cooperstown.
All 571 ballots from the Baseball Writers Association of America will be tallied and announced on Tuesday, January 6, and will be broadcast live on MLB Network and MLB.com.
Piazza, baseball’s all time home run hitting catcher, failed to accrue the votes needed to be elected last year, tallying just 62.2 percent of the votes and falling short by a pretty big margin.
Bill James used his statistic Runs Created to show how Piazza ranks among the game’s best catchers.
James also dispels the notion that Piazza was not a good defensive catcher, saying that all statistical measures suggest that Piazza was an above-average defensive catcher.
In his career behind the plate, pitchers had a 3.80 ERA when Piazza was catching. If you look at all the other catchers who caught the same pitchers in the same year that Piazza did, they allowed a 4.34 ERA.
Said James, “Mike Piazza was not a defensive liability who made up for it with his bat. The greatest offensive catcher in the history of Major League Baseball was a good defensive catcher as well.”
Stay tuned…
