How Does Piazza's Vote Percentage Compare To Other Great Catchers?

The table below shows the top 10 in career WAR for guys who played 50%+ games at catcher

Carter actually fell to about 33% in his 2nd year and slowly rose to make it. So Piazza did better than Carter but not as well as Berra. Carter jumped to about 49 in his 3rd year and to 64 in his 4th year. He had 72.7 in year 5. We could look at Piazza's vote as pretty normal for a catcher. We don't have to say that he was necessarily affected by the steroids era.

Ted Simmons caught more games than Johnny Bench, Ray Schalk, Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra. More innings than Bench.

The votes for Dickey, Hartnett and Cochrane are a little strange as the rules were in flux. Their vote histories from Baseball Reference are below. What I use for 1st year above is 6 years after their last year, which would be in line with today's rules, although Cochrane got no votes in that year (1943). As you can see below, he did get votes in 1942, so I used that above.

Hartnett jumped 20 points in 1953, from about 39 to 59 and got in the next year

Hall of Fame-Dickey
1945 BBWAA ( 6.9%)
1946 Final Ballot (12.2%)
1946 Nominating Vote (19.8%)
1948 BBWAA (32.2%)
1949 BBWAA (42.5%)
1949 Run Off (20.9%)
1950 BBWAA (46.4%)
1951 BBWAA (52.2%)
1952 BBWAA (59.4%)
1953 BBWAA (67.8%)
1954 BBWAA (80.2%)
Selected to HOF in 1954 by BBWAA

Hall of Fame-Hartnett
1936 BBWAA ()
1945 BBWAA ( 0.8%)
1946 Nominating Vote ( 1.0%)
1947 BBWAA ( 1.2%)
1948 BBWAA (27.3%)
1949 BBWAA (22.9%)
1949 Run Off ( 3.7%)
1950 BBWAA (32.1%)
1951 BBWAA (25.2%)
1952 BBWAA (32.9%)
1953 BBWAA (39.4%)
1954 BBWAA (59.9%)
1955 BBWAA (77.7%)
Selected to HOF in 1955 by BBWAA

Hall of Fame-Cochrane
1936 BBWAA (35.4%)
1939 BBWAA (10.2%)
1942 BBWAA (37.8%)
1945 BBWAA (50.6%)
1946 Final Ballot (24.7%)
1946 Nominating Vote (39.6%)
1947 BBWAA (79.5%)
Selected to HOF in 1947 by BBWAA