RotoRank Roundtable

Is Mike Piazza still worthy of a 1st Round Pick?

Production Relative to All Other Players
ESPN's Fantasy Rankings has Mike Piazza listed as the 112th player overall with a rating of 0.38 in a mixed league 5x5 category draft based on his actual 2002 Statistics. Part of his low ranking is the fact that Piazza (along with the rest of the New York Mets) had an "off" year: if you consider 69 Runs, 98 RBI, 33 HR, and a 0.280 Batting Average an off year for any player, especially a Catcher. The main reason Piazza's ranking is so much lower is due to the fact that other offensive stars have had huge seasons the past few years.

When you look at the back-to-back seasons that Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, Jason Giambi, and other premiere sluggers, you can easily see that Mike Piazza's numbers have not kept pace. Then, when you take into account the limited number of base-stealers in Major League Baseball and you rank guys like Carlos Beltran, Bobby Abreu, Derek Jeter, and Ichiro Suzuki you can understand why Mike Piazza may slip into the third or fourth round of a Fantasy Baseball Draft! But why will most Fantasy Guru's still rank Mike Piazza in their top 12 or top 24 picks?

Dominating His Position
With the exception of Ivan Rodriguez and Jorge Posada, Mike Piazza clearly out-performs everyone at the catcher position. On a year-to-year basis, no catcher hits as many homeruns as he does and he always maintains a respectable batting average. When veteran fantasy baseball owners analyze the first few rounds of a draft, they aren't always concerned about getting maximum value from their top draft picks. Since almost any player selected in the first few rounds of a fantasy draft can be worthy of a slightly higher or lower pick, a lot of veteran owners subscribe to the "Scarcity" theory. The "Scarcity" theory revolves around drafting the best player available at positions where the talent pool drops off considerably after the top 3 to 5 players, before looking at the best available player. At Catcher, the best fantasy player is clearly Mike Piazza, so owners prescribing to the "Scarcity" theory will take Mike Piazza in the first or second round if he is available.

Other factors that keep Mike Piazza highly ranked on fantasy draft boards around the world is the fact that he is a player that everyone likes to watch hit a baseball. He wasn't highly touted coming out of the minor leagues, but his hard work and dedication has made him a superstar and likely Hall of Famer, so he will always get our attention. When you get down to it, Fantasy Baseball allows us to feel more apart of the games being played, and when given the opportunity, most of us will select the players that we want to cheer for during the game, and Piazza is one of those players.

Conclusion
Although some fantasy owners will let Mike Piazza slide by their mid-first round pick and hope he makes it to the second round, any owner drafting late in round one should definitely consider taking Mike Piazza. He might not put up numbers as high as Manny Ramirez (or another comparable slugger in a deep fantasy position like outfield or first base that are normally available in the late first round), but Mike Piazza's offensive dominance at catcher makes him an extremely valuable commodity. And in the event that your draft doesn't go well after selecting Mike Piazza as your first or second round pick, you can always trade him to improve your team, since he will definitely be the most sought after catcher in 2003!