Dodgers: 5 greatest seasons by a catcher

Who had the greatest season as a Dodger catcher, and what season was it?

From Roy Campanella to Mike Piazza to Russell Martin, the Dodgers franchise has been blessed with an amazing line of catchers. We could debate which catcher was the greatest in team history, but we will leave that discussion for another day.

After examining the five greatest pitching seasons in Dodgers history yesterday, today we will focus on the men who made their living squatting behind the plate.

In ranking the best catcher seasons, we considered how their performance ranked among its peers in the same season, as well as how it would compare to other seasons using league-adjusted statistics.

We considered both offense and defense, while paying attention to superlative performances on one side of the equation that might have set a particular season apart from the rest. Honestly, it’s splitting hairs in deciding which Roy Campanella or Mike Piazza season was the best, but we gave it our best shot.

It would have been easy to simply rank each season according to the highest wins above replacement value, but we wanted to go beyond just looking at an aggregate number in thinking about the overall impact of a given campaign. We considered MVP and Silver Slugger Awards, where appropriate, as well as where seasons ranked among all-time leaderboards across a variety of statistics.

(Partial spoiler alert), some honorable mentions include Russell Martin‘s 2007 and 2008 seasons, Roy Campanella’s 1955 season, Mike Piazza’s 1995 season, and Mike Scioscia‘s 1985 season.

Without further ado, let’s count down the best catching seasons in Dodgers history. And special thanks to Baseball-Reference for much of the statistics referenced in this article.