Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza took very different routes to the Hall of Fame. Griffey was dubbed “the natural” and was the first pick in the 1987 draft. Piazza wasn’t drafted until the 62nd round. They are two of the greatest to ever play their positions and will take their rightful place in Cooperstown this weekend.
The Hall of Fame inductions in any sport are the ultimate comparison to your peers and the legends that came before you. You have to be one of the best to ever play to get in. Some players will be forgotten, while others live on long after they pass away. Generations know who Babe Ruth is almost 70 years after his death.
Where will Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza rank? Their professional baseball careers began very differently. The one thing they did share in common was connections to their elders in the major leagues. Griffey’s father Ken Griffey Sr. was a starter on two Cincinnati Reds world championship teams. The godfather of Piazza’s brother is his former manager with the Dodgers, Tommy Lasorda. Their similiar paths to the majors end there.
Griffey was the first pick in the 1987 amateur draft. He had nicknames like “The Kid”, “The Natural” and of course “Junior.” Greatness was expected. He dominated minor league baseball before beginning his career out of Spring Training in 1989, less than two years after he was drafted.
Piazza was the antithesis of Griffey. He was the 1,390th pick in the 1988 draft, the second pick in the 62nd and final round. It was Lasorda who recommended Piazza to general manager Fred Claire. Claire succeeded Al Campanis a year earlier.
Piazza’s rise through the Dodgers system was not as quick as Griffey’s through the Mariners organization. Piazza was two years older than Griffey when drafted: Junior was 17 years old when he was picked in 1987, while Piazza was 19 when he was selected a year later.
Griffey played 54 games in 1987 with the Class A short-season Bellingham Mariners. He moved up to advanced Class A San Bernardino for the 1988 season. He played 58 games there absolutely crushing California League pitching. He finished the season with the Double-A Vermont Mariners of the Eastern League. Griffey hit .279 with two home runs and 10 RBI in 17 games with Vermont. He was only 18 years old, but the Mariners felt he was ready for the show.
He finished third in the 1989 AL Rookie of the Year balloting. He was behind Orioles closer Gregg Olson and Royals starter Tom Gordon who won 17 games. Junior hit .264 with 16 home runs, 61 RBI and 16 stolen bases.
His next three seasons were solid. He had back-to-back 100 RBI seasons in 1991 and ’92. He reached superstar status in 1993. That began a run of 40 or more home runs seven times in eight years and 100+ RBI in six of those years. The only year he did not reach those milestones was in 1995 when he played in only 72 out of 145 games.
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Between 1994 and ’99 Griffey led the American League in home run four times, including three in a row from 1997-99. His 382 home runs in the 1990s also led the AL.
The majority of his time in Seattle Griffey was able to stay healthy. He only missed 19 games in his first two seasons in Cincinnati, after that he wasn’t able to stay on the field. That left fans and media wondering what could have been if he did.
Barry Bonds was often touted as the best player ever during his career. Griffey was by all accounts clean, and if he had been able to stay healthy would have been up there with Bonds numbers-wise. His 438 home runs in his first 12 seasons are the most in MLB history.
Griffey was 31 when his finished his first season in his hometown of Cincinnati in 2000. He missed only two games that season. After that, he averaged 92 games and 324 at-bats in what should have been his prime.
Griffey had six top-ten MVP finishes and won the award in 1997. He didn’t make the All-Star team as a rookie, but beginning with his second season he was named to 11 straight from 1990-2000. He also won a Gold Glove every year in the 90s for his ten total and added seven Silver Slugger awards.
Upon his retirement in 2010, FanSided’s partner Sports Illustrated did a study figuring out what Griffey’s stats might have looked like if he had stayed healthy:
"Adding the Lost columns, we find that, from 2001 to ’06, Griffey lost 1,561 plate appearances to injury, costing him 353 hits and 92 home runs. By those calculations, if Griffey had stayed healthy, he would have hit 31 or more home runs in each of those six seasons (the “Total HR” column), twice reaching 40 homers."
Those 353 potential hits and 92 home runs would have pushed his career numbers to 722 home runs and 3,134 career hits. That would have put him third all-time in home runs behind Bonds and Hank Aaron and moved him from 46th to 19th all-time in hits. His 99.32 percent of the Hall of Fame vote (437 out of 440 votes) broke Tom Seaver‘s previous record of 98.84 (435 of 430) in 1992.
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Piazza was a September call-up in 1992. He didn’t make an impact but broke out as a full-season rookie in 1993. He hit .318 with 35 home runs, 112 RBI and a slash line of .370/.561/.932. He was the unanimous Rookie of the Year, a Silver Slugger and an All-Star.
His rookie season began a run of ten years of being the most dominant catcher in Major League Baseball. From 1992-2001 he won ten straight Silver Sluggers and went to ten straight All-Star Games. He was the National League starting catcher in the All-Star Game ten times between 1994-2005.
Eight times, Piazza finished in the top-ten in MVP voting, including back-to-back runner-up finishes in 1996 and ’97. He lost out to Ken Caminiti in ’96 who acknowledged using steroids that season, and to Larry Walker in ’97.
He is unquestionably the greatest hitting catcher ever, but his defense was very underrated. People tended to focus on his below average ability at throwing out base runners. His former teammate Tom Glavine discussed Piazza’s defense with NJ.com in 2014:
"“He did a lot of things well behind the plate,” Glavine said. “Yeah, he wasn’t the greatest thrower. That unfortunately translated into people thinking that some of this other game wasn’t as good as it was. He called a good game. He received the ball fine. He blocked balls fine.“But so often catchers are defined defensively on how well they throw and there’s much more that goes into just being a good defensive catcher than being able to throw. That aspect of his game, for whatever reason, garnered the extra attention and overshadowed the other aspects of his game.”"
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Griffey and Piazza’s legacies should live on far beyond their inductions on Sunday. They are arguably the greatest players to have ever played their positions.