Craig Biggio: Catcher, Second Baseman, 3,060 Hits
Craig Biggio's twenty years with the Houston Astros, from catcher to second baseman to outfielder, with 3,060 hits, 668 doubles and a Hall of Fame vote that fell two votes short before he was elected.
Craig Biggio played 2,850 games for one team, the Houston Astros, and collected 3,060 hits, 668 doubles, 414 stolen bases and 291 home runs along the way. He did it as three different kinds of player: a catcher for four seasons, a second baseman for the bulk of the rest, and an outfielder in his late thirties because the club needed him there. Few members of the 3,000-hit club moved around the field that much, and fewer still changed positions after they were already stars.
His Hall of Fame vote tells the other half of the story. Biggio missed election in 2014 by two votes, a hair's breadth, and he was elected the following year with 454 votes. The margin in 2014 is a useful lesson in how the voting threshold works, and it is explained below. This article follows his career in phases, using the historical record through the 2025 season for every number, and it is honest about what that database does not contain.
A Seton Hall catcher drafted by Houston
Biggio was born on December 14, 1965, in Smithtown, New York, on Long Island. The historical record lists him at 5 feet 11 inches and 185 pounds, a right-handed batter and thrower, and he attended Seton Hall University, where he caught. The Astros drafted him in the first round in 1987, and he reached the major leagues on June 26, 1988. He played 50 games that summer and hit .211.
The next two years established him as an everyday catcher with unusual speed. In 1989 he played 134 games, hit .257 with 13 home runs and 60 runs batted in, and won a Silver Slugger Award as the best-hitting catcher in the National League. In 1990 he hit .276 and stole 25 bases while catching most of his games, a speed profile that suggested the position might not suit him. By 1991 he was at .295 with 161 hits, still catching 139 games.
| Year | Games by position | Average | Hits | Home runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | C 50 | .211 | 26 | 3 |
| 1989 | C 125, OF 5 | .257 | 114 | 13 |
| 1990 | C 113, OF 50 | .276 | 153 | 4 |
| 1991 | C 139, 2B 3 | .295 | 161 | 4 |
| 1992 | 2B 161 | .277 | 170 | 6 |
The move to second base in 1992
Before the 1992 season the Astros moved him to second base, and the table shows how decisive the change was: 161 games at second in 1992 after only three the year before. The reason usually given is the physical cost of catching on a fast, athletic player, and that is a reasonable inference from the position's demands, though the historical record cannot confirm it. What the historical record does show is that Biggio then played second base for most of the next decade without a break: 155 games in 1993, 113 in the strike-shortened 1994 season, 141 in 1995, 162 in 1996, 160 in 1997 and 159 in 1998.
It is a rare transition. A catcher moving to second base has to learn a new set of skills: the footwork around the bag, the double-play pivot with runners bearing down, reading the ball off the bat at a different angle. Biggio won four Gold Gloves at second base, from 1994 through 1997, which suggests that the learning was quick. The reasons catchers take longest to develop are a separate subject, but the fact that a former catcher could be a Gold Glove middle infielder tells you something about the athletic base he had.
1994 to 1999: the peak
With the move behind him, Biggio became the best leadoff hitter in the National League for most of the 1990s. He hit .318 in 1994, with 44 doubles, 39 stolen bases and a league-leading doubles total. In 1995 he hit .302 with 22 home runs and led the league in runs scored with 123. In 1997, the year he won the Branch Rickey Award for community service, he hit .309 with 191 hits, 22 home runs, 47 stolen bases and 146 runs, which was the league's best. He made the All-Star team in 1991 and 1992 and every year from 1994 to 1998, and he won Silver Sluggers in 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998.
| Year | G | AB | H | 2B | HR | SB | AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | 114 | 437 | 139 | 44 | 6 | 39 | .318 |
| 1995 | 141 | 553 | 167 | 30 | 22 | 33 | .302 |
| 1997 | 162 | 619 | 191 | 37 | 22 | 47 | .309 |
| 1998 | 160 | 646 | 210 | 51 | 20 | 50 | .325 |
| 1999 | 160 | 639 | 188 | 56 | 16 | 28 | .294 |
The 1998 season is the one to remember. He collected 210 hits, hit .325, and recorded 51 doubles and 50 stolen bases, a combination of power and speed that few players have produced in a single year. The next year he hit 56 doubles. He led the league in doubles in 1994, 1998 and 1999. The Astros won the division in 1997, 1998 and 1999, each time as the National League Central champion, and each time lost in the first round: to Atlanta in 1997 (0-3), to San Diego in 1998 (1-3) and to Atlanta again in 1999 (1-3). Biggio went 1 for 12 in the 1997 series.
The league environment is part of the context. National League teams hit .262 in 1998 and .268 in 1999, scoring about 4.6 and 5.0 runs per game, and the Astrodome, where he played until 1999, was a pitchers' park. A leadoff man who hits .325 with 51 doubles in that setting is doing something different from the same hitter in a hitters' park.
Doubles, hit-by-pitches and the unglamorous categories
If you ask what made Biggio unusual, the answer is in the categories that do not make highlight reels. His 668 doubles rank sixth in the historical record behind Tris Speaker (792), Pete Rose (746), Stan Musial (725), Ty Cobb (724) and Albert Pujols (686). His 285 times hit by a pitch rank second behind Hughie Jennings (287), an old-time shortstop of the 1890s and early 1900s, ahead of Tommy Tucker (272) and Don Baylor (267). He scored 1,844 runs and drew 1,160 walks.
Being hit by a pitch is a skill in the sense that a batter can crowd the plate and not move away, and Biggio did both. It adds to on-base percentage the same way a walk does, and it is the reason his on-base percentage of .363 was more than 80 points higher than his .281 average. Biggio hit 20 or more home runs in eight seasons, but the doubles and the hit-by-pitch totals tell you more about what he was good at than the home run total does.
Those are not the categories young players dream about, and that is a useful lesson for any youth coach. Sportsmanship and the mental game in youth baseball discusses the habits of effort and composure that build careers like his: taking the free base, running out every ball, accepting the bruise.
2003 to 2005: center field and a late power surge
In 2003 the Astros signed the second baseman Jeff Kent, and Biggio moved. The historical record shows him with 150 games in the outfield in 2003 and 149 in 2004, after fifteen seasons as a catcher and second baseman. He hit 15 home runs in 2003 and 24 in 2004, with 47 doubles. In 2005 he returned to second base for 141 games and hit 26 home runs, his career high, at age 39.
Part of the late power may have come from a ballpark. The Astros moved from the Astrodome to Enron Field in 2000, a park later renamed Minute Maid Park and listed by the historical record as Daikin Park in 2025, with a short left-field porch. A right-handed hitter who had never hit more than 22 home runs in a season suddenly had a ballpark that suited him. That is an explanation, not a proof, but the timing fits: his two highest home run totals, 26 in 2005 and 24 in 2004, both came after the move.
October: six postseasons
The historical record shows 40 postseason games, 167 at-bats, 39 hits, 2 home runs and 11 runs batted in for Biggio across six postseasons, a .234 average that is below his regular-season mark. The best series were in 2004 and 2005, when Houston finally won in October. In 2004 the Astros beat Atlanta in five games in the Division Series, the first postseason series win in franchise history, and Biggio hit 8 for 20 with a home run. They lost the National League Championship Series to St. Louis in seven games, and he hit 6 for 32.
In 2005 Houston beat Atlanta in four games and St. Louis in six, with Biggio hitting 6 for 19 and 8 for 24 in those rounds. The Astros then reached their first World Series, and the Chicago White Sox swept them 4-0. Biggio went 4 for 18 in that series. It was the closest he came to a championship, and it stayed his only World Series appearance. A baseball career of twenty years and 2,850 games contains only 40 postseason games, which is a reminder of how long the Astros had to wait for a team that could win in the fall.
3,000 hits and the last season
Biggio entered 2007 with 2,930 hits and needed 70 to reach 3,000. The Astros were a poor team, 73-89 and fourth in the division, and the season was largely about the chase. On June 28, 2007, against Colorado, he got the 3,000th hit, and he finished with 3,060 on September 30, the last day of the season, at age 41. He was the 27th player in the historical record to reach 3,000 hits. The Astros later retired his number 7, and his 2007 honors included the Roberto Clemente Award for sportsmanship and community service and the This Year in Baseball Moment of the Year for the 3,000th hit. In 2005 he had won the Hutch Award, given for fighting spirit.
The Hall of Fame vote: 2013, 2014, 2015
The Hall of Fame requires 75 percent of the ballots cast by eligible writers. In 2013, his first year, Biggio received 388 of 569 ballots, 68.2 percent, with 427 needed. In 2014 he received 427 of 571, a gain of 39 votes, and needed 429. He fell two short. In 2015 he received 454 of 549, 82.7 percent, with 412 needed, and was elected in a class that also included Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz.
The arithmetic is worth walking through. The threshold is the smallest whole number of votes at or above 75 percent of ballots cast: 75 percent of 571 is 428.25, so 429 votes were needed in 2014. Two ballots, out of more than 570, separated him from election in 2014, in a year when Tom Glavine and two others were elected. The following year the number of ballots fell to 549, and the threshold fell with it.
His case was never about a single number. The traditional argument rested on 3,060 hits, a figure shared by relatively few players. The modern argument rested on his versatility and on-base ability, and on the fact that he produced those totals at three positions of unequal difficulty.
What the numbers mean, and what the historical record cannot say
A .281 career average looks modest for a 3,000-hit player. It is a product of volume: Biggio had 10,876 at-bats, which is a lot, and the hits came from longevity rather than a high rate. His on-base percentage of .363 and slugging percentage of .433 give an OPS of .796, which is solid rather than spectacular. The case for him was always a case about the whole package: defense, speed, doubles, durability and positions played.
The historical record has no wins above replacement, which is the statistic that best captures a player's value across positions, and it has no Statcast, no defensive metrics and no sprint speeds. It cannot tell you how many runs his glove saved at second base, or what difference it made to the Astros each time he changed positions. The database also leaves out minor-league and amateur play, and it carries Negro Leagues rows from 1920 on, which has no bearing on Biggio but matters for anyone who wants to compare him with players of earlier decades.
Common questions
How many hits did Craig Biggio have? 3,060, including 668 doubles and 291 home runs, in 2,850 games with Houston.
What positions did he play? Catcher from 1988 to 1991, second base for most of 1992 to 2002 and again in 2005 to 2007, and outfield in 2003 and 2004.
Why did he miss the Hall of Fame in 2014? He received 427 votes and needed 429.
Did he ever win a World Series? No. The Astros reached the 2005 World Series and were swept by the White Sox. Biggio played in six postseasons.
Is his son in the majors? Yes. Cavan Biggio made his debut with Toronto on May 24, 2019, according to the historical record.
Where to go next
For a teammate's profile, read Jeff Bagwell: Houston's Cornerstone, and for another view of the 3,000-hit era compare it with the career of Alex Rodriguez. The leaders pages rank active and retired players by hits and doubles, and the stat calculator lets you work out on-base percentage and OPS for any line, including his own.