Serious Baseball: Mike Piazza Projections

Welcome back to Part II of “Projecting the Old-Timers” by “Serious Baseball.”

As we did in our last article with Frank Thomas, we will use this segment to project another of the mentioned available free agents that are up there in age; Mike Piazza.

As mentioned earlier about Piazza, Mike is a twelve time All Star and former National League Rookie of the Year award winner (1993). His career has taken him through three cities: Los Angeles as a Dodger, Miami as a Florida Marlin, and for the last seven years he’s played in New York as a Met, and he has hit the most HR’s of any catcher in the history of the game.

In 2005 Piazza only played in 113 games due to a variety of injuries. Some of the many ailments that cut Piazza’s season short were a concussion, a sore left thumb, a broken bone in his left hand, and a bruised wrist.

Even though he played in such a few amount of games though, Piazza still managed to hit 19 HR’s and drive in 62 runs in that time, and his Slugging Percentage was a very respectable .452.

The problem was that the power he showed was the only thing Piazza showed last season. He batted a meager .251 with a .326 OBP.

A very interesting fact about Piazza, and one of the reasons he is a still a free agent, is that he is the holder of a very obvious decline over the past six seasons in OPS. That’s right, not a three season decline, a six season decline:

2000: 1.012 OPS
2001: .957 OPS
2002: .903 OPS
2003: .860 OPS
2004: .806 OPS
2005: .778 OPS

That trend combined with various injury problems, and Piazza’s age answers the question, “Why is this certain Hall of Famer not signed yet?”

Anyways, lets get to the projecting. As always, let’s take a closer look at Piazza’s plate discipline by season (IPD):



In general, Piazza has gotten more patient as the years went on. While his career IPD (.071) is merely average, since 2001 it has been much better (.084) showing that as he has aged, he’s gotten more patient, like most hitters do.

The sudden decline last year can be blamed on Piazza having so many interruptions in his season due to the large amount of injuries he accumulated. If Piazza were to play a full season in 2006 he would be sure to have slightly above average patience at the plate like he’s had every season since 2001.

In a full season, Piazza’s IPD in 2006 will be .079.

Now, let’s look at the strong part of Piazza’s game, his raw power. Here is his ISOP progression chart (Provided by Fan Graphs.com):



As I’m sure we all expected, Piazza has always been above average in this category. Notice his decline since 2000 though. This is not surprising at all and is something that should seriously be considered when projecting his 2006 season.

Even though Piazza had a slight increase in his raw power in 2005, this will not stop me from projecting a very average figure for Piazza in this category for 2006. The fact of the matter is that Piazza is old, and power is a facet of one’s game that will regress as a player grows older.

If Piazza played a full season in 2006, his ISOP would be .170.

Lastly, to make our best effort to project an AVG for Piazza in 2006 we must take a look at his BABIP:



Piazza hasn’t posted a good BABIP since 1998. Actually, if you take a look at that last point on the graph it is dangerously close to the bracketed-off portion of the chart that says “Poor.” A player’s BABIP doesn’t always follow trends though, they tend to regress the to mean (.300), so another year of decline isn’t automatic.

In 2005 injuries led to his second straight year of regression here. If he played a full season in 2006 he’d be able to get that BABIP back up to what it was in 2004, which is still below average. I’ll actually project it to be a tad higher since Piazza is likely to sign with an American League team as a DH, and won’t even have to play 1B like he did for the Mets in 2005. This lack of wear and tear on his body (knees), will lead to a slightly better output from Piazza in 2006.

In 2006 Piazza’s BABIP will be .293.

That increased BABIP over his 2005 number will be sure to improve each facet of Piazza’s game in 2006.

In 2006, for whatever team he may play for, hopefully as a DH, Piazza will post the following season (based on 500 AB’s):

.271/.350/.441, .791 OPS, 20 HR

The average OPS produced out of an AL DH was .777 in 2005. As you can see, this projected by Piazza would make him slightly above average at this position.

Based on that fact, it is no wonder that Piazza is not a hot commodity this off-season, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Piazza get a very small contract for his services in 2006. After all, what team would be willing to pay big bucks for a slightly above average offensive player that can’t field?

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com.