A Super-Charged Battery: Pedro and Piazza

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that I think Piazza is way better behind the plate in many ways than the Red Sox's Varitek, i.e. pitch calling, pitcher-catcher communication, helping the pitcher keep a good rhythm going, and so on. I watched lots of Pedro's games while he was with the Sox  (I've been following him for quite awhile), and Varitek moves around so much, it seemed to me that he would sometimes give away location to the batter at key moments. Varitek has an annoying propensity to stand up to catch high fastballs. Talk about wasted pitches. Almost every batter would see those coming. Prior to Pedro's injury, Varitek's constant moving around didn't seem to matter since Pedro was a power pitcher and just blew people away left and right. But when he came back from his injury, he lost some of his power, changed his style to adapt and finessed a lot. Under those circumstances, I think Varitek's style of catching hurt Pedro. Now Pedro has regained a lot of his strength. He can blow fastballs right by batters again, and he has tremendous movement on his pitches. He can also finesse by changing speeds and hitting his spots. Despite the three supposed wild pitches (which Pedro said were really only two) last week, Pedro is showing great control, IMO. As for Mike, he has a lot of stillness as a batter, and he has that same quality as a catcher. You don't see him jumping around at the last minute behind the plate. He presents Pedro with a target, but not so it tips off any batters as to what's coming. As noted in another post, Mike said he's still learning how to catch Pedro. I fully expect them to just get better and better as a battery.