Are They Hall of Famers? – The Catcher Edition

We at Sox and Dawgs decided to start taking a look at some current players to see if they could gain election to Hall of Fame. In this series, we’re going to look at players who are currently active who have reasonable consideration to be a Hall nominee. This isn’t a science and you may have others on your list that we left off. There are some fine young players who are just starting their careers who may have Hall potential but for arguments sake these are for guys who have been around a bit or those few outstanding younger players who just jump off the page at you.

In this series we’re going to look at the players by position as compared to Hall members of that position. The position is the primary position of the player through his career. If he played a significant amount of games in another position that will be listed next to his name. Some of the guys we will look at over time have endured position changes, but because the majority of their career was at one position over another we have chosen that as the position in which they are being considered.

The third category we will look at is catchers.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has sixteen catchers enshrined we are going to use three for comparison. They are:

Johnny Bench 17 yrs, 2158 G, 7658 AB, 2048 H, 381 2B, 24 3B, 389 HR, 1376 RBI .267 BA, .342 OBP, .476 SLG, 14 All-Star teams, 1 ROY, 2 MVPs, 1 World Series MVP, 10 Gold Gloves, 2x HR leader, RBI leader 3x, 1742 GC

Bill Dickey 17 yrs, 1789 G, 6300 AB, 1969 H, 343 2B, 72 3B, 202 HR, 1209 RBI, .313 BA, .382 OBP, .486 SLG, 11 All-Star teams, 1708 GC

Roy Campanella 10 yrs, 1215 G, 4205 AB, 1161 H, 178 2B, 18 3B, 242 HR, 856 RBI, .276 BA, .360 OBP, .500 SLG, 8 All-Star teams, 3 MVPs, RBI leader 1x, 1183 GC

We have two possible candidates for the Hall:

Their stats are current as of June 30, 2007

Ivan Rodriguez 17th yr, 2088 G, 8017 AB, 2431 H, 492 2B, 43 3B, 285 HR, 1162 RBI, .303 BA, .341 OBP, .482 SLG, 14 All-Star teams, 1 MVP, 1 NLCS MVP, 12 Gold Gloves, 1998 GC

Mike Piazza 16th yr, 1855 G, 6705 AB, 2017 H, 334 2B, 7 3B, 420 HR,
1299 RBI, .309 BA, .379 OBP, .549 SLG, 12 All-Star teams, 1 ROY, 1 All-Star Game MVP, 1629 GC

Pudge and Piazza in my book are locks. The numbers when compared to current Hall members are really solid and they’re growing daily. Piazza gets in more for his offensive numbers in the position while Rodriguez, even those he has good offensive numbers, has held up the defensive standards set by guys like Johnny Bench.