7 Catchers had .300 career average. How many can you name? Ep. 706 04.27.26

Another week in the books for Major League Baseball and things have improved for the Mets and the Phillies. Well, just barely. They've won a game and that's an improvement for them, but not much there. Alex Cora out in Boston and there, did you know there are only seven catchers that have ever hit 300 for their career in Major League Baseball? You'd be surprised by who some of them are. It's this week in baseball. Obviously, I think the biggest news.

of the week is Alex Korra's firing, if only because it supersedes Carlos Mendoza being out as first manager being fired this year. The Red Sox apparently today, here on Sunday, came out and said that this shows that they believe in the players. So this is the take they're trying to take. So we didn't think the manager, obviously, without them saying it this way, you know, but we believe these players are the right players. So we got rid of the manager.

What else are going to do? can't get rid of all the players. obviously. That's sort of where we are as Met fans, being like, listen.

They stink and you gotta make a change when you stink this bad and unfortunately the only guy you can really change is the manager. Now to be fair, I don't have to be fair, but Alex Cora preceded Craig Breslau, the general manager, Bobo, whatever he is in Boston. And so most of the time guys want their guys and it took a little bit of time for Alex Cora to not become his guy.

It's been a couple seasons in a row of underperforming. They won 89 games last year. mean, OK, they didn't win. They didn't win. You get to the World Series or anything like that. But I would say because they started so poorly last year and the whole Devers thing, I think really weighed on the organization. And it's just been it's been this organization that sort of had this like thing hanging over. Obviously, Korra is not happy about this firing. And I'm sure there's a lot of franchises out there thinking right now being like, well, we wouldn't mind out.

Almost Cooperstown (01:57.214)
And know, remember, he got the job after having to take a year off from the whole Astros thing. Right. then they won the World Series in 2018. And all of a sudden he was, you the guy, the manager again. So and, know, the Yankees beat the tar out of the Red Sox. I mean, they swept them this week. And so they come back and then they win a game 17 to one on Saturday. And that's the game that gets Alex Kora fired. Right. I think that they had already decided to get rid of him. And that was probably fair

They had not been playing a noon game. would have fired him before the game and they just happened to win that game big. But I think the Yankees are looking around and that the American League going, OK, yeah, we're got a cool before like already like hold serve position for the rest of the season and like, yeah, before May. Well, and it's a point, you know, that I wanted to make going, OK, so the Yankees obviously in first place with the Rays still not far behind. They're 16 and 11. I don't know if you think the Rays are going to have staying power. I don't. So if you you were

going to put them aside for a moment say, OK, of the other three teams that are underperforming the Red Sox right now, the Blue Jays and the Orioles, if you look at it that way, which of those three teams has the best chance to run down the Yankees and give them a fight for the division title? Do I have to pick? Yeah. OK, that says where your head's at. I mean, I guess I'd say the Blue Jays purely because in the theory that the guys come back from injury and go right to back to being what they expect them to be, they're the team that

I have to do the least explaining for otherwise why they'd suddenly be good other than like, yeah, guys came back from injury and they're not playing with their guys right now. Whereas like the Orioles is just like, okay, guys in the lineup that have now not performed for a number of seasons suddenly start having to perform. That's a lot harder. And that's kind of where I am with the Mets and a lot of their issues where it's just like, the only way I can reasonably expect them to be better is I have to expect a bunch of guys who I now have a large body of evidence

as being not particularly good at baseball in the major league level, suddenly becoming very good at the baseball at the major league level for an extended period of time. And it used to be able to say, well, it's only April.

Almost Cooperstown (04:09.41)
You know, there's a lot of baseball. The thing is that number one this April has been interminable. Now, granted, the Mets lost 12 games in a That's why it feels so. feels for you if you're rooting for the. But in general, it's like the season started in March. They've played 27 games already. Almost 20 percent of the season is over and we're still in April. It feels like endless. And we haven't even gotten the May. Right. And you obviously I don't think it's too early for any, you know, no team is out of it yet, especially with an expanded playoffs, because

when people talk about how no team has ever finished started the season with X or Y record or lost this many games. That's comparing it against all of baseball when for the longest time, literally two teams made the postseason. That's such a great point, Gordon, because, you know, the same thing as they never happened before. Well, you never had this many teams made the playoffs. Right. So we can't really look at it the same way. So the Mets are are are they in bad shape for making the playoffs? Yeah. But I don't think they're out of it nearly the same degree, because let's be realistic. There's not that many teams that are playing that well right now. The Mets are nine and the Mets are nine and 18 going into the second game with the.

going to the second game of a doubleheader, assuming that that nine and 18 doesn't count. It counts the game. They literally just lost. They could be nine and 19. I'm not 100 percent sure. No, no, they're nine and eight. Nine and 18. OK, they could come back, but they could could rip off. and 19. They could rip off like six, seven in a row. And all of a sudden they're 15 and 18. And they're kind of like right back into like being outside the wild card race. You know, I like to do these little mathy things and I think about it. OK, so there are nine and.

19 or whatever. if they have, if they play, have, no, they're not an 18 because they played 27 games. I remember thinking this before we started doing this. So there's 135 games left. If the Mets go 80 and 55, okay, 25 games over, they'll win 89 games.

that might just get them into the playoffs, but they have to go 80 and 55 for a team that looks in no way like they're poised to go 80 and 55. longer you go into the season, the more pronounced that math equation gets where suddenly you're like, OK, well, if they just go 70 and 10 over the last 80 games of the season, they'll be fine. Look, the Mets have done something that's really hard to do in baseball. And that is they made the Colorado Rockies look like a good baseball team. Well, I mean, right now, the Mets, that's because the Mets right now are a bad

Almost Cooperstown (06:22.384)
And I think as a Met fans, you have to stop treating them like they're like, know how we people talk about like people are temporarily embarrassed millionaires that they're, you they talk about how they act as if they had money. We met fans act as if we have a good baseball team. I'm sorry, Met fans. We have a season and like a half plus of evidence to suggest the very contrary that we are not. And, meanwhile, the know, the Cubs won 10 in a row before they final loss to the Dodgers on on Saturday night. But all that did was get the

I think they're now tied for first place or going into today with the Reds. Right. They're just even no one's talking about the Reds. Right. The Reds are 18 and 10. They're cruising right along. Now, they're a team. They're doing so well in one run games right now. And now the thing is, over the course of a single season, that can hang up. That can hold up. You can totally have a magical year. The Mets had that a couple of years ago in twenty twenty four. Hint hint hint. When they were really, really good, they had a year. They were crazy good in one run games. It's not something that is the state.

It's really hard to be a teen that is like pronounced.

good at that. what makes it harder for the Reds is in that division right now, the Pirates are 16 and 11 going into Sunday, the Brewers are over 500, the Cardinals have played better than, you know, than anybody expected so far. It's a tough division just to win with games within your own division right now. So it makes it seem harder for a team to emerge if everybody else is going to play it tough. That's what's happening over, you know, in the West because the Dodgers like, hey, we're 18 and nine to start the season and the Padres are like, hey, we're hanging around. Are you guys still here?

the Padres. Haven't you guys dropped off yet? Yeah. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Braves are loving it. They're they're sitting in paradise right now. They're going to get a walk to a division crown this year. It sure looks that way. And, the Phillies lost again here on Sunday to the Braves. And, you know, the Phillies are the only thing that keeps the mess out of the cellar, proverbially, is the fact that the Braves are the Phillies are there. And you know what? I want to say this in all honesty, I take no solace from the Phillies having a tough time. It doesn't matter because our team that we root for is doing so bad. It doesn't matter.

Almost Cooperstown (08:27.062)
It'd be a lot more fun to enjoy the Phillies downfall if I wasn't also suffering the downfall at the same time. So, you know, and will the Phillies figure it out? Well, they got back Zach Wheeler on Saturday and he was workmanlike in his five inning return to the mound, but he got back from the Thoracic pretty fast and before May. you know, that has to be a good deal. They're almost in a worse situation because not only are they not scoring, they're not pitching well. No, they're not. And I think Christopher Sanchez has been not what they expected.

expected him to be when they paid him. This was the danger. And you knew this could happen with the team. Now, I think the Phillies in some respects are in a kind of a better position than the Mets because you always knew this was the one year experiment of bringing the band back together to try and get it to work. And then they'll blow it up. And now you're going to blow it up this off season if they if they don't turn it around themselves. And, you know, Ria Mottos on the IELTS, which, you know, when they brought him back, it was touch and go, whether they do in the first place. He's an older player. But as a leader and the guy that I know, he's a guy I never like to see.

to the plate when something counts. really like him as a player, but he's older and now he's injured and that really sets them back. think leadership is something that's

overrated from a fan perspective because it's something that we can't really quantify. We arbitrarily assign to players and arbitrarily assign it value. Like how valuable is Lindor's leadership on the Mets? Like how many games? When he's hitting 200 isn't very valuable. Exactly. So it's like, think leadership, it's hard for me to like be like, oh, well, I really value his leadership because his leadership is only as valuable as he's good as he is because you could have the guy that's got the best leadership and skills in the world.

But if he's another player on the team, nobody's going to listen to the like, the backup catcher like his word is gospel when Aaron Judge, you know, wins an MVP. You know, he's the captain and a team leader when he struggles in a playoff series or something like that. It's the leadership falling apart, you know, right? Just because he didn't perform well, it's got nothing to do with his leaders has been the same. Right. Right. But but leadership is generally you're taking your cue from the guys that are playing the best. And that's why process is important, but that's why results are important. So it's easy for

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everybody to talk about how good the process is when the process is leading to results. Shohei's process is amazing because they're winning. Would everybody be talking about how good a process is if they weren't? so the same thing we said about clubhouse vibes a few weeks ago going, yeah, clubhouse sides are great when you're winning. Right. Everybody's hitting. It feels terrific. But when you're not like, like, you know, the teams that are bad right now, they have bad clubhouse vibes because they're losing. Right. Exactly. All the leadership skills in the world don't matter if you're not in a position to be able to utilize them.

Because we all know it's not rah-rah stuff. It's about setting a tone and an example. It is really hard to do that if you're not performing. I'll just, the last thing on Aaron Judge. So was thinking today Aaron Judge turned 34 and he's a 10-year major league player. So he obviously got started a little later that I think is only interesting from the standpoint of I started, I compared, this is heresy and I'm gonna write an article about that. I compared.

to Mickey Mantle. say, no, you can't do that. You can't compare Aaron Judge to Mickey. You can't go anybody to Mickey Mantle. He was basically God, you know, when I was a kid. He was was late in his career. So I'm a too young. Mickey was a hero. I I'm going to go out and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the inability to compare people to Mickey Mantle is something that's probably slightly more exclusive to people bored in the 1950s and 60s in the New York area. I don't have any problem comparing people to Mickey Mantle.

I think when I did my initial look at that was just to look at their first 10 years of their career because that's all that obviously you can compare them to. That's all Judge has. So and Mickey was still better, but not, you know, light years better. his the first 10 years of his career were amazing. And it's going to take a better second half of his career for Judge in order to have any chance of closing the gap on Mickey Mantle. And I don't know at 34 years old if you can do that.

That's unlikely but that's why Mickey Mantle is remembered as one of the all-time greatest because yeah, he really was that good. And I was trying to come out of it saying well, that's how good Aaron Judge is. You can compare it to Mickey Mantle. Well, you can but it doesn't look as good as you, you know, you think it does until you sort of start courting off his career and have Aaron Judge win another two or three MVPs in the next five or ten years. Yeah, but if you Aaron Judge hit against the pitchers Mickey Mantle hit again.

Almost Cooperstown (12:57.102)
Yeah, well, he did play all the way in integration when Mantle came up and I was thinking he came up in 1951. So the Yankees were winning the third straight World Series. So he came into a great team. They won in 52. They lost in 55. They won in 56. They lost in 57. They won in 58. So he is on five World Series winners in his first 10. Aaron Judge has got no World Series wins. So it's kind of a big difference stakes. And so I think Mantle's teams were better, too. 100 percent.

So anyway, I'll be I'll be working on that as well. What else do we see this week? Murakami is continuing to hit home runs. He's proving it looks like it's a brilliant for the league league league right now. It's a brilliant deal by the White Sox, but that kind of folds into look.

This is a tough league because we talked so much about prove it right now you look at guys like Ellie De La Cruz and O'Neil and O'Neil Cruz who are both playing fantastic baseball who are finally playing like the guys their teams need them to be as Ellie De La Cruz April records the hardest hit ball of the season it is April

We've seen this before with the Pirates. were talking about this a couple podcasts ago, how they had that great April to start off and then they fell apart. So we have to see, but they're playing the way that their teams need them to right now. You're not both of their teams are playing well, right? You're not looking at the Reds going, okay, you're 18 and 10, but you're really good in one run games and okay. Yeah. And in LED, the cruise is going to come along and that'll help that. No, there he is there. He's doing that, which is both a great thing and a concerning thing. Cause you're like, you need to win all these run run games when he's finally playing.

like the guy we thought he was. But I think you're seeing that and you're seeing guys, the teams that are succeeding are the teams that are having guys step up and play well, obviously. The reason why the Mets and the Phillies aren't playing well is because nobody in their lineup is performing and respectively. Exactly. And watching the games, if you're watching an offensively inept team, which is what the Mets are right now, it's torture watching them because they never get the hit. They leave the bases loaded like all the time and you just know.

Almost Cooperstown (15:00.096)
And I'll say that, okay, I realize, because I would prefer them to be at a pitching inept team. I'm gonna say this. If you're casually watching the game, your team being pitching inept is infinitely more tolerable than hitting inept.

Because you guys get on base and they get some hits. Well, because you get on base, you score runs and yeah, your team might fall behind. But when your team is giving it up and they're not pitching well, you just change the channel. OK, yeah, they're down 9-1 today. You just don't watch the game. I watch them. At least you get to watch them score. But when they don't hit, you watch the whole freaking game because it's 1-0 and it's a close game and you watch them just trot up there over and over again, striking out. And that's so much worse than just turning off the game and doing something else with your day.

This week I saw that I wrote down Crochet. What's wrong with Crochet? Because he had had a couple of bad starts until yesterday. And then so there is nothing wrong with Garrett Crochet. % of the season is a big part of the season, but it's also 15 % of the season. You could have a bad 15 % of your season and still win the Cy Young. I think once you get past the quarter mark.

20 once 25 percent of the season is done or 40 games. That's when it starts being hard to overlook that part of the season for anybody for a player statistically like like, you know, because we looked at Lindor like it's like, okay. Yeah, Lindor you were great, you know for a bunch of the month last year, but like sorry having two months of the season where you're legitimately one of the worst short stops in baseball doesn't exactly work for us. And he's just

kind of followed that up this year with the same thing. Now you're not going to see Lindor on the field probably until late June as his injury is worse than the one that his teammate Soto got. So it makes you think, OK, so what are they doing in the locker room that two guys that are stars got calf injuries in the sink? They're not doing anything. Yeah, they're noncontact. They're weird noncontact injuries. It's not like the two pitchers both have the same arm issue and they throw the same pitch that the Mets taught them. Lucas Gialito. Finally, we've been talking about

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that signed with a major league team, being the Padres. they rich get richer. They have another pitcher who is continuing on what we've been talking about is an amazing run because Mason Miller still hasn't given up a run in thirty four and two thirds innings this year. And that that puts him on. This is the longest a relief pitcher has ever done that. And the record, by the way, and I knew that Hersheiser or Hersheiser had the record with fifty nine consecutive scoreless innings. Question is,

Is it harder to do it as a reliever than it is as a starter?

They're difficult in different ways. You accumulate the innings a lot faster as a starter, but you're also throwing to the same batters multiple times in the same game. So they got a chance to see you. But the reliever has to do it across all these different outings. he'll come out all the different times. Right. He's got to be electric in so many different games comparative to the starter. So I think they're both really difficult. They're just difficult in different ways. That's a good point, because as we know, getting through the lineup a third time today

day is more difficult than it was when Hersheiser even pitched. Right. So, you know, that that kind of makes that the challenge going, well, how are you going to maintain that kind of a scoreless streak as a starter? Well, as a relief pitcher, like we said, you got to come in and you better be on your game every single day. That thirty four innings. like, OK, well, wait a second. You got it. You got to basically be pitching, you know, all and all of these different games and all of these different batters without giving up anything, which is hard. So a couple of notes on on the Brewers starter, Jacob Mizorowski, who is the flamethrower.

He has thrown the three hardest pitches of the season to the first batter of the game that yesterday on Saturday striking him out with a hundred and two point seven mile an hour for Seamer it represented the fastest strikeout pitch by a starter since pitch tracking began in 2008

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beating tarik scubals 102.6 mile fastball on may twenty fifth last year he then struck out brendan lowen a hundred and twenty two a hundred and two mile an hour point two third strike so he this is what i found interesting he's the first star of multiple strikeouts at a hundred miles an hour or more in an ending under pitch tracking only the second pitcher with multiple hundred and two mile an hour plus strikeouts a game this guy is now supplanted hunter green i think as the guy that you can count on the most for the best performance at at

100. Well, he's going to be the guy that's going to throw the ball hardest. He's kind of taken over and some planted everybody as the hardest throw worse, hardest throwing starter in major leagues and the major league. When you see a guy throwing that hard as a starter and we saw the ground do it, you saw obviously Hunter Green do it. You think, OK, it's only a matter of time. The injuries are coming. So that's that's what I would be most concerned about. The pick, the early pick for a triple crown in the American League, I think would

have to go to Jordan Alvarez. it really a pick for Triple Crown? Well, in terms of him hitting for average and because, you the home runs, I think are a little surprising that he's leading the league in home runs. I don't think you would expect him to be a guy who's going to finish the season with 40 homers. Oh, yeah. Pays to do that right now.

Really? You wouldn't. I don't know if he's that kind of a home run. He's just a fantastic. Really? I don't know. I think of him as that kind of power hitter. Well, he I think as you get older, also, you can get with a little bit more power. But he's doing it all. And yet, despite that, the Astros aren't still very good. Right. Right. And so it's not always about having the best player on your team or having, you know, the guy that's, you know, look at all those years with Miguel Cabrera in Detroit when he ran their Triple Crown. wasn't like they were particularly good. That's a true story. The the Braves.

started a rookie last week Jim Ritchie against the Nationals and the first pitch he ever threw in the major leagues was hit over the fence for a home run by James Wood. Now that might shake up some pitchers. You want to have a great start. Yeah. Pitch seven innings and he got the win. So good for him. Right. And coming back from that he'll never forget that. That's for sure. Yeah. The first pitch I threw the guy hit in the parking lot. But I stayed in the game and they got seven innings. What else? You Savage is going to make his debut this week for the Blue Jays.

Almost Cooperstown (21:07.728)
Finally, so we were talking about them getting healthier. That would go a long way. That goes a long way to have them. And they're actually right around 500 now. So quietly of the teams that started out poorly, they've actually righted the ship a lot better than some of the other teams we've been talking about. Not too many big names go into the I.L. Just Denzel Clark, Wyatt Langford for Texas and then JT Riamuto, as we discussed, he also went to the I.L. So as you kind of progress through the season, you just see more and more names added to that list.

So we were talking about Otani and pitching and what the Dodgers have started doing is considering what do we do when Otani pitches should he bat because he doesn't hit very well when he pitches and so a couple of suggestions I heard was A. don't pitch him at all and listen because they're talking about the Dodgers having an unfair advantage.

like see a lot of 13 pitchers on the staff. the Dodgers have 13 pitchers the staff plus so tiny. He doesn't count as a pitcher. You're never going to be able to sell that as an unfair advantage because he's a unicorn. He's special and that kind of stuff. But it does allow the think about it. The advantage for the Dodgers. mean, they basically have another arm. Right. Every other team doesn't have. So so what do you do with him on the days that he's pitching? And somebody said, well, maybe you just bat him third or something. So he doesn't come off the mound in a home start. Had to get the guy.

out and have to run and get his helmet and run up there and hit lead off for the Dodgers and like actually that's a pretty good idea. Save him some you know. him little bit of you know so that messes with the lineup a little bit and and so basically his his on base streak that he had he had something going 53. 53 games in a row he got on base so that puts him in a very exclusive club because he's also hit 50 homers.

And he's had a season where he had 50 stolen bases. Only one other player in the history of Major League Baseball has done those three things. 50 games on base, 50 homer season and 50 steals.

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Barry Bonds. Good guy to be on a list with. you know, we like to do Hall of Fame. Yeah, we like to, you know, look at the extraordinary things that I wouldn't have put that as a category even. But Jason Stark and the athletic kind of brought that up last week. I thought that was kind of interesting as well. So we talked about the lead, right? Right. Right. We talked about catchers because when you think about the greatest offensive hitting catchers of all time, you when you think about it, at least on a Hall of Fame level, you think Mike Piazza.

Yeah. And then it kind of stops. There's not a lot of guys in terms of anybody that's hit that level, at least. know, following the game for a long time, you know, what I was surprised to see is that and I think my friend Tom Stone was the one who came up with the article that only seven catchers have a career and you have to have enough at best to qualify, have a career average over 300. So there's a few things that go with that. They're all six of them are Hall of Famers.

okay so okay you could use a good hitter as a catcher and and a couple of a really recent that's the thing that catches the on that so buster posy who's not yet a hall of famer so actually only five of them are all famous the six one will be a hall of famer cuz i'm counting on posy and the other guy recently is joe mauer was uh... recent hall of famer as well so those are your recent guys in piazza you go down there but then you go further to be further back and you have guys that you know unless you're an older guy like me you probably even are barely familiar with mickey cochran who played for the title

I've heard the name and that's because I'm around you Ernie Lombardi the schnoz that roared who played no relation to Vince no Vince the Vince but early body the slowest man in baseball at the time and and Bill Dickey who I've heard of again because we've talked about Hall of Famers on this podcast so much that he comes up Bill Dickey the career Yankee and what I liked about Bill Dickey is he wore number eight and the guy that wore number eight after him was Yogi Berra who was the catcher basically it with a couple of guys for a

to him between the two. So number eight was the catcher for the Yankees for like.

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30 years or something like that between those two guys. And the other guy was a guy, this is what maybe you of write about it, was a guy named Spud Davis. Actually his real name is Virgil Davis, but because he liked to eat potatoes, they called him Spud, which was like that, that was just boring. Like I wanted some exciting name why he got the name Why'd Davis get called that? Spud Davis. What do mean? Very good, very good. But Spud Davis, so I compared him. Spud Webb. Spud Webb. I compared him.

to the other guys and immediately the two things came about. Spud Davis is not a Hall of Famer. Even though he hit .306 for his career, he hit like, I'm gonna say, a soft .306 with like 117 ops plus compared to these other guys who all hit, you 120, 130, and then there's Mike Piazza. So the other thing is is that Mike Piazza is, he looks better. When you compare it to other Hall of Fame catchers who hit .300 that are all basically Hall of Famers, Piazza

It's like, man, this guy was really good. don't realize how much of a unicorn Piazza was as a player until you look at him in comparison to the other catchers. And you're like, wow, there's basically never been an offensive force at catcher in Major League Baseball like Mike Piazza for the full breadth of a career. Nobody has ever hit like him. Barrow was a great hitter. Bench was a great hitter. They weren't the hitter that Mike Piazza was. Ivan Rodriguez was a great hitter. Posey.

and and Mauer were great hitters and they probably Mauer probably comes the for a period of time closest but nobody had the consistent power right so what makes this a cure officer i think is 143

which is just 43 % better than the other players. Forget about comparing them to other catchers. So here's my other take, I think, I came up with is, well, I think a 300-hitting catcher, catchers are normally the slower runners on the team, right? So a 300-hitting catcher isn't as good as a 300-hitting speedy outfielder. Like, what if you isolated OPS Plus to just their position? Right, right. It'd be interesting to see, because then that would also help with, like, it would probably help give more val- it would be interesting with the value on guys with like we would that give more value because we also talk about how like speedy guys don't get as much credit with run creation exactly exactly and so you know the the catchers you know because they don't run well and all that stuff a catcher gets a two out base hit to get his album but he's not gonna score from first on a double he's not gonna so he holds you back a little bit in that respect and it's so it's more of a I'm saying meaningless that it doesn't really mean as much as his ops number would mean in that situation and so that's why all these other stats we keep coming up with

on base plus slugging and weighted runs created plus. That's a better measure, particularly when you're playing the most difficult position on the field to try and evaluate what makes a great catcher a great cat. Right. Catcher, because I don't know any catchers that are going to hit 300 in today's major league. couldn't even think how many guys are going to hit major 300. Not even guys can hit 300 period. You know. So, yeah, the the the idea of being having a good eye like Piazza did that gives you the higher on base average. But then he had the tremendous power.

And the Andy hit for average does think piazza was a complete a hitter as you can ask for he got on base He hit for a power. He hit for average There's not a lot of guys that do that and the ones that do they get paid like Juan Soto does Yogi Berra had 358 career home run so he had plenty of power for a catcher, but he didn't bet 300 Exactly that that's the thing is that when you hit 300 and you have that kind of power You're such a force in the lineup comparative to a lot of people so maybe the Braves Drake Baldwin who's gotten off to an amazing

start to his career, you know, will will approach that. But I think anybody that does that, if you hit three hundred for a season and have a great season, you're probably doing it for a season. got to get a career. Might be outside a career batting average of three or eight. And that's with some garbage years at the end of his career when he wasn't very good. If you stopped after his like year, thirty fourth season. Oh, man, his career numbers would be even better. Right. Right. He had those crazy years when he first came up with the Dodgers where he won a batting title. Right. I want to say he batted like three fifty or something.

His career high. He never won a batting. He never won a batting title. you know, he hit three sixty two one year, but he never won a batting title. Sorry. He hit three forty six, three thirty six beat him for the Tony Gwynn must have beat him when he batted. I was in ninety seven. No, it wasn't Tony. How do you lose a batting title when you hit three sixty two in today's in today's baseball? Right. I don't know. I'm not sure who won. But let me me look it up really quick. One second. So I guess we don't you know, we saw Piazza play here New York, obviously, as

Almost Cooperstown (29:45.604)
met fans and because we're stupid met fans sometimes, know, the complaint you always have with Piazza was defense wasn't that good, couldn't throw out runners very well. was Tony Gwynn. It was Tony Gwynn. OK. Well, because Tony Gwynn had three seventy two to beat out not Mike Piazza, but to beat out Larry Walker, who had three sixty six and a third. Yeah, it's a very third three sixty two. Yes. So you don't even finish second. So that tells you how great Piazza was. And so I just think it's interesting that the the the whole of Major League Baseball, only seven catches bad at three hundred. A few of them fell just short, but not Mike Piazza.