Kuzul

The 2013 MLB Hall of Fame class has been all over the news lately.The announcement comes Wednesday, Jan. 9., and this year marks the first time that the some of the game's greatest but also most controversial players—Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling—are eligible to be elected.MLB Network has brought in everybody and their mother to give their two cents on who should be elected and how the era should be evaluated based on the prevalence of performance enhancing drugs.Opinions on the subject are widely varied.Some experts and observers accept that it was just the era that these players played in and are willing to overlook cheating to include players like Bonds, who despite admitting to unknowingly using steroids, is still the all-time home run leader.Another option was to induct them later and hold them off of the first ballot as protest. Some say that any player ...

Every year, the Baseball Hall of Fame chooses its newest members through the Baseball Writers Association of America. The writers place up to 10 votes on the ballots, and whoever garners 75 percent of the vote is elected. The 2013 ballot includes some big names. Among them include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling and Mike Piazza. Out of all the candidates for election, Piazza looks to be the one with the best shot at election.Having spent 15 years behind the plate—14 if you count the awful first base stint—hitting the most home runs by a catcher and earning numerous honors, both as a Met and a Dodger, there is almost no doubt that Piazza deserves to be a first ballot Hall-of-Fame elect. Here are five reasons why. Begin Slideshow

Note: This is part of a series for Baseball Digest in which I pick each Major League team's best player/coach at every position. The complete Yankees list is up on the website. The complete Dodgers list will go up early next week. Some of it can be viewed early at SoapBoxSportsByte.Roy Campanella Of anyone on this list, Campy might get the strongest challenge from a fellow Dodger. Mike Piazza was only with the team for five years, but his Dodgers WAR is just 8.6 wins short of Campanella’s career mark.In those first handful of years of his career in Chavez Ravine, Piazza put up some of the greatest offensive seasons in the history of the catcher position. He clubbed at least 30 home runs in four of the five years, never batted under .318, and had four seasons over 6.0 WAR (including an insane 9.4 win 1997 season when he put up ...

In part three of this 13-part series of the greatest Mets of all time, we move on to position players, beginning with catchers.Over their history, the Mets' most stable non-pitching position has arguably been their catchers. These catchers may have worn the tools of ignorance, but there was nothing ignorant about how they played. The Mets have had all kinds of catchers, from premier home run-hitting machines to speedsters and defensive wizards. In fact, some of the catchers the Mets have had became arguably some of the best offensive catchers in history.They have all called good games and helped the Mets become a team that almost always has had an arsenal of pitchers.Due to the fact that the Mets have not had ten actual legitimate everyday catchers through the first 49 seasons, the rest of the spots could only be filled by backups. Nonetheless, backup catchers have played important roles ...

There has been little talk about the fact that it is the 25th anniversary of the Mets 1986 World Series victory. It is time to change that.After reading a great piece by Stephen Meyer comparing two of the best Yankees teams in the franchise's history, I decided that it would be a good idea to do something similar with the Mets.With this being the anniversary year, the 1986 Mets team seems to be an obvious choice for this piece. In addition, they were one of the best Mets teams of all time.The 2000 Mets were one of the franchise's best teams in recent history. Led by Mike Piazza, the team lost to the Yankees in the World Series.This article will serve as the grounds for a hypothetical match-up between two of the best teams in franchise history. It will be broken down position by position and each players year will ...

Although they have always been overshadowed by the Bronx Bombers, the Mets have possessed their fair share of baseball's greatest, especially in recent time. The Mets offense struggled during most of the 1960s until it all of a sudden became clutch in 1969 when they won their first World Series. The offense was better, but still inconsistent during the 1970s. When the Mets won, they were hitting, but during the latter years in which they were a losing team, the hitting was not the same. In the 1980s, the Mets were consistently hitting well, probably their best offensive decade. The 1990s offense was weak, but kept getting stronger each year, but after the 2000 season, the offense was no longer a force until 2006-2008 when the Mets started contending for the playoffs again. As a result, all ten of the Mets' greatest hitters are from the 1980s-present, and this is ...

As news continues to come out about the Wilpons’ connection to Bernie Madoff, it only seems to get worse. In an outstanding piece written for the New York Times by Serge F. Kovaleski and David Waldstein, the Wilpons’ link to Madoff is examined. A former Mets employee was quoted saying, “Bernie was part of the business plan for the team.” It turns out that Madoff was a huge part of the Mets business plan. The Mets would place any deferred money that they owed to players in Mr. Madoff’s investment firm (yes, that means that the team will need to find another way to fund paying off Bobby Bonilla’s seemingly endless deferred payments). Regarding Bonilla, it has been reported that his money was in an account. It is now obvious why ownership was so willing to except the Bonilla buyout. They expected to earn 18 percent on the money they invested with ...

The Mets are looking at Ronny Paulino to back-up Josh Thole, which would form the catching tandem for the 2011 season. I know this post might be a little off topic with all the Hot Stove murmurings going on, but I felt that it would be a good time, in lieu of the Mets possibly signing a catcher, to remember the career of Mike Piazza. Piazza burst onto to the scene with Los Angeles Dodgers and won the NL Rookie of the Year award in 1993. He put up big numbers for the Dodgers through five full seasons. Then on May 22, 1998, the improbable yet remarkable happened for Met fans. The Mets sent Preston Wilson, Ed Yarnall and Geoff Goetz to the Florida Marlins in exchange for Piazza, who had been traded to the Marlins only a week earlier. Todd Hundley had ...

With the Major League Baseball Hot Stove season almost at its boiling point, many fans across Dodgertown can't help but recollect the most notable trades in the history of the Los Angeles Dodgers franchise.Since officially moving to Los Angeles in 1958, many player trades occurred that were instrumental in winning nine National League pennants and five World Series championships. However, along with the deals that were beneficial came the deals that were dreadful, and people wonder what may have transpired if a number of these trades could have been undone.The following slides rank the 50 worst trades in the history of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, as well as offer a bit of commentary for each transaction. Please note that the rankings don't include any free-agent signings, nor do they contain any deals made prior to the Dodgers moving to Los Angeles. The list is not syndicated in any fashion ...

The National League Rookie of the Year announcement was made earlier today, and Giants catcher Buster Posey deservedly took home the honor. He received 20 of the possible 32 first-place votes, and beat out fellow phenom Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves. Posey helped lead the Giants to the World Series title, and he could also be considered an NL MVP candidate for his contributions. With Posey's great season, this is a good time to look back at some of the other great debut seasons posted by catchers recently, as catcher may be the toughest position to man as a rookie. So here are the top 10 seasons from rookie catchers in the past 20 years, including this year's phenom, Buster Posey.Begin Slideshow