Compared to some of the other hitters on the Hall of Fame ballot, Craig Biggio and Mike Piazza don't exactly have overwhelming offensive numbers. The two of them combined for exactly zero MVP awards, zero batting crowns, and zero home run titles. Neither of them led their league in WAR in any season. A whopping 17 players on this ballot have a higher career OPS than Biggio, and 15 have a higher career WAR than Piazza. And yet you'd still be hard-pressed to find a reason to keep either of them out of the Hall of Fame.
Biggio's offense isn't impressive in a vacuum: a career .281/.363/.433 hitter with an OPS just below .800. But for a player who spent almost 2,000 games at second base (plus another 800 combined at catcher and the outfield), that production was elite. His .796 OPS and 112 OPS+ are comparable to the career marks of Ryne Sandberg (.795 and 114) and Roberto Alomar (.814 and 116), both of whom were recently inducted into the Hall as second basemen. Biggio also played more games than any other second baseman in history, an impressive feat considering that position's notoriously detrimental impact on career length.
It was this longevity that helped Biggio reach the fabled 3,000-hit milestone, a number attained by only three other second basemen ever (and just 28 players total). And it's not as though he reached that mark by beating out singles for 20 years. Biggio ranks 32nd all-time in career extra-base hits with 1,014, the most by any second baseman. Comparatively, that's only 27 fewer than Pete Rose, who had the benefit of 1,200 additional hits and 3,000 additional plate appearances. Biggio's career home run total of 291 isn't mind-boggling, but it's the third-highest home run total among all second basemen. Most notably of all, he ranks fifth all-time in career doubles among all players ever, trailing only Tris Speaker, Pete Rose, Stan Musial, and Ty Cobb in that category. For a middle infielder who derived much of his value from longevity, he produced excellent power numbers.
Along with extra-base hits, Biggio offered a wide array of skills that have traditionally been overlooked. He scored 1,844 career runs, most among all second basemen and the 15th-highest total among all players ever. He stole 414 bases at a solid 77% success rate. He was bizarrely good at avoiding double plays; once, in 1997, he came to the plate 744 times and didn't ground into a single one. And he perfected the art of reaching base by the hit-by-pitch -- he accumulated the second-most HBPs ever, and led the league in that category five times.
It's misleading to suggest that Biggio was merely a good-but-never-elite player whose performance never rose to Hall of Fame standards. Across the nine seasons between 1991 and 1999, he hit .299/.391/.451 and was one of the five most valuable players in baseball. In both 1997 and 1998, he posted an OPS over .900, stole at least 47 bases, hit at least 20 homers, and was a top-five MVP candidate. He played key defensive positions for two decades and accumulated over 3,000 hits, a third of which went for extra bases. As one of the best up-the-middle players of the last two decades, Craig Biggio is a fairly obvious selection for the Hall of Fame.
And using that same logic, so is Mike Piazza. Like Biggio, Piazza was a valuable player because of the excellent offense he produced at a position typically occupied by poor hitters (in this case, catcher). But unlike Biggio, Piazza is actually the best offensive player that his position has ever seen. No catcher can match his career home run total of 427, or his .545 slugging percentage, or his .922 OPS, or his 143 OPS+. Those are all records among catchers, all held by Piazza, most by a fairly wide margin. His 1997 season ranks as the single best offensive campaign any catcher has ever had. His career line of .308/.377/.545 would make him elite at any position; at catcher, it makes him a god.
At his peak, Piazza was not merely the best-hitting catcher in baseball -- he was one of the league's best hitters, period. During the ten-year period from 1993 to 2002, Piazza ranked as the third-most valuable player in baseball (behind only Barry Bonds and Jeff Bagwell) because of a cumulative .322/.389/.579 line and an average of 35 homers per season. Not once during that decade did his OPS slip below .900. In 1995, he was the best offensive player in the league (he hit .346/.400/.606 with 32 homers and led the league in OPS+). The same was true in 1997 (he hit .362/.431/.638 with 40 homers and led the league in OPS+ again). He finished in the top four in MVP voting four different times, including two second-place finishes.
Piazza's candidacy is far from flawless, thanks to defensive shortcomings and a shorter career that failed to last 2,000 games. But thanks to his incredible bat, Piazza still ranks as the fifth-best catcher of all time according to WAR, in a virtual tie with Yogi Berra. He trails only Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Ivan Rodriguez, and Carlton Fisk, all of whom had the benefit of several hundred additional games. And not one of those four had a career OPS within 100 points of Piazza's. When you redefine expectations for offense at your position, you should be a Hall of Famer. Piazza's Cooperstown credentials should not be in question.
Both Biggio and Piazza were among the best players in the league during their era and among the best players at their positions historically. That is literally the definition of a Hall of Famer. Yet somehow, neither one was elected to the Hall of Fame last year. That's a wrong that needs to be corrected in 2014. Second basemen aren't supposed to thrive as long as Biggio did. Catchers aren't supposed to hit as well as Piazza did. Greatness of that caliber deserves to be recognized, and better late than never.
My Ballot:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine
8. Curt Schilling
9. Mike Piazza
10. Craig Biggio
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