Mets Cut Ties With Piazza

[Guest sayvanderlay]

Edgy DC wrote: You're not making a case against his retention. .

I wasn't trying to.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

Welcome newbie

[nymr83]

with the book now closed on Piazza as a Met i must ask some serious questions:

1. was he the greatest Met of all time?
2. was he the greatest Met hitter of all time?
3. was he the greatest Met catcher of all time?
4. does he go into the HOF a Met?
5. should his number be retired at Shea Stadium?

i'll refrain from answering until a few other people do.

[Guest Edgy DC]

1. was he the greatest Met of all time? No.
2. was he the greatest Met hitter of all time? Possibly.
3. was he the greatest Met catcher of all time? Most assuredly.
4. does he go into the HOF a Met? He'll go in as himself.
5. should his number be retired at Shea Stadium? Yes.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

The only thing that would keep Piazza from being the greatest Met hitter ever would be his longevity & compiling relative to Strawberry, Alfonzo and maybe a few others, but as a pure force in his best moments I don't think anyone was ever better, even Strawberry. He had real ultimate power. He beats Grote & Carter as best Met catcher rather easily.

Obviously Seaver remains the GME, overall.

I hope his HOF bust shows his helmet backwards like a catcher, leaviing everyone wondering and satisfied. The real question will be which facial hair design to they immortalize.

[metirish]

] I hope his HOF bust shows his helmet backwards like a catcher, leaviing everyone wondering and satisfied. The real question will be which facial hair design to they immortalize.

I love that, have to go with the porn-burns look .

[nymr83]

the backwards hat would be funny, but lets be honest, there is way too much money to be made off it for them to allow that :-\

i think Strawberry was the better hitter as a Met, though Piazza had a better career.

i do not think his number should be retired. i think 7 1/2 years, especially with no world series rings, is just not enough. if you retire him you've got to retire some other guys first. if you're going to keep retired numbers truly special i don't think he was here long enough.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I think Piazza's mullet has been retired enough years to be eligible for Hall of Fame this season.

[Frayed Knot]

"the backwards hat would be funny, but lets be honest, there is way too much money to be made off it for them to allow that"

I don't see how the HoF makes money off having a particular (or any) insignia on a hat on a plaque.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Nymr83 wrote: i do not think his number should be retired. i think 7 1/2 years, especially with no world series rings, is just not enough.

Funny thing is, of the three retired Mets, only Seaver has exceeded 7 1/2 seasons, and not by all that much. Between Gil, Casey and Seaver, they put in an average of under 7 1/2 seasons in a Mets uniform, with a pair of WS rings between the three men, so it's not as if there's some unreachable star for a retired number candidate to grasp.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Through 1998, Piazza had earned 185 Win Shares, his rate of annual WS being about 28 or so at that point. In signing him, the Mets could have projected a total of about 130 Win Shares over a 7-year period as a reasonable if rosy estimate. (I'm using a version of Bill James' Favorite Toy, his tool for projecting future performance on to current stats, but you can use what tool you prefer. If you're projecting much more than 130 Win Shares, though, I've got to say that that may be the problem right there.) That means that if he keeps up his performance at the near-MVP level (30 WS is MVP level) for a while, like 3 years, then his projected performance over the remainder of the contract isn't so rosy.

Piazza had earned 33 WS in 1998 for three teams. (He had broken the 30 mark thrice before, his high being 39 in 1997.) In 1999, his first year under the contract he earned 21 WS, then

28 in 2000
and
21 in 2001,

making for about 70 WS over the first three years of his contract. The Mets had gotten good value from him and he was right on track to accumulate 130 WS in the remaining four years of the contract. Instead of dealing him, and getting a fair return on this still-valuable player, the Mets (and most Met fans) insisted on retaining him. Sure enough, they witnessed this decline:

19 WS in 2002
11 WS in 2003
12 WS in 2004
and
I don't have 2005 yet but it brings us up to about mid-50s total for the last four years. Piazza never again got the near MVP total he'd earned in 2000, he never as a Met broke the 30 WS mark, yet he gave the Mets just about exactly the 130 WS they could have reasonably expected when they signed him in 1998.

[Frayed Knot]

"only Seaver has exceeded 7 1/2 seasons, and not by all that much."

11-1/2 actually, so if by "not all that much" you mean 'over 50% more', then you're more or less accurate.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

That's my goal, FK. "More or less accurate."

My point here is that basing Mets' retired numbers on longevity with the team is like basing actresses' Oscar chances on their bra sizes. With some exceptions, the relationship is an inverse one, historically, and even the exceptions haven't been strongly exceptional.

[Frayed Knot]

When it comes to players, longevity should be one of the major attributes to consider and - seeing as how the retired player-numbers (as opposed to old guy manager ones) consists of a sample size of 1 - it's tough to argue that service time should be thrown out the window on account of some sort of weak criteria that's been established.

If it were up to me I probably wouldn't retire #31, although I suspect they will and it's not something I'm going to get all bent out of shape about.