While he was pretty much the only baseball player on earth who could consistently catch Tim Wakefield's knuckleball, Doug Mirabelli never got much credit for swinging the bat. Was it because the everyday catcher was switch-hitting Jason Varitek, or was he really not very good? I've compiled some stats from Baseball Reference for you to look at and decide for yourself.
This first batch of data are averages for Mirabelli, Leon, and Vazquez. For Mirabelli I’ve also explicitly shown data for his best two seasons in a Red Sox uniform. With Vazquez currently having his best season and getting lots of media love for it, I've also shared his current numbers for a quick comparison.
Not the only one, but Merloni is very impressed with Vazquez’ offense this season.
Next up I gave some raw data for each of the catchers. Doing some quick calculations you can see that for his career in Boston, Mirabelli hit a home run 4.7% of the time he registered an at bat. In Vazquez' career, he's only done that 2% of the time. In Christian's current season where he is getting a lot of love, he's hitting dingers 5.3% of the time. PS. in 2001 Doug went yard 6.4% of the time.
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