Can a Hall of Fame Case be Framed for Brian McCann?

Brian McCann, the powerful left-handed hitting catcher for the Atlanta Braves, New York Yankees, and Houston Astros, is a candidate for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. McCann, a seven-time All-Star, is one of fourteen first-time candidates on the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) ballot.

McCann hit 20 or more home runs in ten different seasons in his 15-year Major League Baseball career, earning six Silver Sluggers. In the last few years of his career, McCann didn’t resemble the type of player that would even be considered seriously for the Hall of Fame but, as we’ll see, McCann had prolific pitch-framing skills that were never widely recognized during his career.

The odds of McCann ever getting a plaque in Cooperstown are exceedingly long but his career is worthy of consideration for the game’s highest honor. In this piece, I’ll briefly recap McCann’s excellent career and then assess whether modern metrics will give him a future shot at the Hall.

Cooperstown Cred: Brian McCann (C)

• Atlanta Braves (2005-13, 2019), N.Y. Yankees (2014-16), Houston Astros (2017-18)
• Career: .262 BA, 282 HR, 1,018 RBI, 1,590 Hits, 110 OPS+,
• Career: 32.0 WAR (Wins Above Replacement from Baseball-Reference)
• 52.1 WAR (from FanGraphs)
• 7-time All-Star
• 6-time Silver Slugger
• 282 career HR are the 8th most ever for MLB catchers
• Member of the 2017 World Series Champion Houston Astros

(cover photo: Associated Press)

Brian McCann Career Highlights

Brian Michael McCann was born on February 20, 1984, in Athens, Georgia. Athens is a college town (home of the University of Georgia) about 70 miles east of Atlanta. Brian’s father, Howard, was, at the time, an assistant baseball coach for the Bulldogs. McCann played high school baseball in Duluth, Georgia (an Atlanta suburb) and was selected in the 2nd round of the 2002 player draft by his hometown team, the Braves.

McCann was just 21 years old when he made his Major League Baseball debut, a home game in Atlanta on June 10, 2005. Playing for future Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox, the rookie backstop went 2 for 3 with a walk and RBI in his first game. The Braves of 2005 won their 14th consecutive division title under Cox so McCann was able to experience postseason baseball in his first MLB campaign. Atlanta was matched up against the Houston Astros in Game 1 of the N.L. Division Series. In his first playoff at bat, McCann hit a 3-run home run off the Astros’ Roger Clemens, helping lead the Braves to a 10-5 victory.

The series, unfortunately, didn’t end well for the Braves or McCann. In the classic Game 4, McCann caught all 18 innings of Houston’s series-clinching 7-6 victory. Although he hit a solo HR in the 8th inning, McCann struck out on three consecutive at bats in the extra frames, including a 14th inning K with one out and the bases loaded. Overall, the rookie went 1 for 8 in the loss.

Perennial All-Star in Atlanta (2006-13)

Brian McCann became the team’s primary catcher in the spring of 2006 and was an All-Star and Silver Slugger in what was officially his sophomore campaign. The Silver Slugger was awarded based on a superb slash line with a .333 BA/.388 OBP/.572 SLG to go with 24 HR, 93 RBI and a 143 OPS+.

McCann would never again match any one of his 2006 slash line stats, but he became a perennial fixture in the Mid-Summer Classic, making every squad through 2011 in addition to winning four more Silver Sluggers. In 2010, he was the MVP of the All-Star Game, thanks to a three-run double that provided all of the National League’s runs in a 3-1 victory.

After an off-year in 2012 (.233 BA, 87 OPS+), the 6’3″, 225-pound catcher rebounded in 2013, making the All-Star squad once again in his free-agent walk year. With another slugging catcher (Evan Gattis) on the team in 2012, the Braves elected to allow the hometown hero to leave via free agency.

In his eight full seasons with the Braves, McCann averaged .277 with a .350 OBP, 21 HR, 80 RBI, and a 119 OPS+. During those campaigns,  Atlanta made the postseason three additional times but never advanced beyond the NLDS round.

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Brian McCann’s Yankee Years (2014-16)

In November 2013, Brian McCann signed a 5-year, $85 million contract with the New York Yankees. Fans of the Bronx Bombers salivated at the prospect of the left-handed slugger taking aim at the short porch in right field in Yankee Stadium.

Those dimensions in right (314 feet down the line and 385 feet in the alley) clearly helped McCann but not to the degree that the Yankees had hoped. Now in his early 30s (which is when many catchers start wearing down), McCann’s hitting skills were clearly not what they had been in Atlanta.

In three seasons in New York, McCann did hit 69 home runs (46 of them at Yankee Stadium) but hit them with a mediocre .235 batting average and below-average 99 OPS+. In his best year in the Bronx (2015), he hit just .232 but with 26 HR and 94 RBI, which was good enough for a 6th Silver Slugger Award.

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McCann’s years with the Yankees coincided with a rare period in franchise history that did not involve multiple playoff games. From 2014 to 16, the Yankees participated in only one postseason game, the 2015 Wild Card game, in which they lost 3-0 against the Houston Astros.

The now 32-year-old catcher was traded to the Astros in November of 2016.

Finally a World Champion (2017 with the Astros)

The Astros followed up on their acquisition of Brian McCann by signing his former Yankees teammate Carlos Beltran to a one-year contract a couple of weeks later. The ‘Stros were a team filled with talented young players; management felt that more veteran leadership was needed, and they could not have found a better pair than in McCann and the 39-year Beltran. A final veteran piece was added at the end of August when the team traded for the Detroit Tigers’ ace right-hander Justin Verlander, then 34 years old.

McCann, in 2017, showed that he could still provide some pop from behind the dish, swatting 18 home runs to go with 62 RBI and a 106 OPS+.  As a team, Houston won 101 games in 2017, and the three veterans all enjoyed the bubbly that accompanies a World Championship for the first time. McCann’s importance as an experienced backstop was recognized by the fact that he started 17 of the team’s 18 postseason games (after a regular season in which he started just 94 games behind the plate).

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Brian McCann’s Final Seasons (2018-19)

McCann followed up the 2017 World Series win with an injury-plagued campaign in 2018. Playing in only 63 games (with 216 plate appearances), the 34-year-old veteran set career lows with a .212 BA and 86 OPS+. In that limited playing time, he hit just 7 HR with 23 RBI. In the postseason, which ended in a 5-game NLCS loss to the Boston Red Sox, McCann started just 2 out of 8 games and went 0 for 8.

In what would ultimately be his final MLB campaign, McCann returned to Atlanta for his age-35 season. He started 79 games, platooning with Tyler Flowers, hitting .249 (86 OPS+) with 12 taters and 45 ribbies.

The 2019 season ended for the Braves in their 5-game NLDS loss to St. Louis. McCann started all five games, going 3 for 16 with no runs driven in.

The Shift

After his first nine seasons (2005-13), Brian McCann truly did look like a potential Hall of Famer in the making. He was a perennial All-Star and a top-level hitter at the position. After all, he was good enough to command $85 million on the free agent market as a 29-year-old backstop. His offensive production waned, however, in his 30’s. There were the nagging injuries that all backstops get, but there was also a change in baseball strategy that severely impacted the left-handed hitter’s offensive production.

The change I’m referring to is the widespread use of “the shift,” a defensive alignment that is no longer allowed in which teams in the field put three players on the pull side of the diamond. The shift has impacted left-handed pull hitters more than anyone. That’s what McCann was, and it started to impact his numbers in his second to last season in Atlanta (2012). According to his Baseball Reference profile splits, McCann either pulled the ball or hit it up the middle on 85% of his at bats in his career.

Take a look at McCann’s numbers on pulled balls from 2005-11 and 2012-19:

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From 2012-19, there were 80 MLB players who were left-handed hitters who pulled at least 500 balls. McCann’s .312 BA was the 10th worst out of those 80. His .214 BAbip (“Batting Average on Balls in Play”) was the worst among all 80, a full 20 points below Pedro Alvarez’s .234. The only thing that made him a still somewhat productive hitter was the fact that he hit 110 home runs on those balls in play, which was the 5th most among those 80. For McCann in the era of the shift, it was home run or bust.

Is there an “Old School” Case for Brian McCann for the Hall of Fame?

OK, let’s get to the meat of the conversation. What is the Hall of Fame case for Brian McCann? As I noted at the top of the piece, pitch-framing metrics provide fuel to his Cooperstown case. Before we get to those, allow me to briefly analyze whether there’s any reasonable argument to be made that McCann deserves a plaque based on traditional numbers.

Many decades ago, sabermetric pioneer Bill James developed the “Hall of Fame monitor,” a formula that analyzes a player’s statistical accomplishments in comparison to already enshrined players at his position on the diamond. On this scale, in which 100 “points” puts a player “in range” of the Hall, McCann scores an 84, which puts his stats below the bar.

Another Jamesian creation is the “Similarity Score,” which looks for the closest statistical match to any MLB player. The top 5 matches for McCann are Salvador Perez, Jorge Posada, Lance Parrish, Bill Freehan, and Roy Campanella. Perez is still active and will be a lightning-rod Hall of Fame case when he becomes eligible. Posada, Parrish, and Freehan never got any support whatsoever from the BBWAA but all have their advocates. Campanella, meanwhile, is a Hall of Famer.

Power Hitting Backstop

So, is there any more good news?

Well, McCann’s 282 career home runs are the 8th most for catchers in the history of baseball. That’s behind six backstops who are in the Hall of Fame (Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Yogi Berra, Gary Carter, Ivan Rodriguez) and one (Parrish) who isn’t. Right behind McCann on the list are Posada and Perez.

Regarding McCann’s tater totals, he is one of only four catchers ever to log 10 or more seasons with 20+ home runs. The others are Piazza, Bench, and Berra. That’s pretty good, but it’s also a somewhat contrived stat. McCann did this despite never hitting more than 26 long balls in a season. Piazza hit over 30 dingers in 9 different seasons; Bench did it 4 times with a career-high of 45; Berra’s a little bit closer but still exceeded McCann’s career-high in six individual campaigns. This stat isn’t good enough.

How do McCann’s 6 Silver Sluggers compare to other backstops since the Award was created in 1980? Here’s a list of the catchers with the most:

• 1. Mike Piazza (10)
• 2. Ivan Rodriguez (7)
• T3. Brian McCann (6)
• T3. Lance Parrish (6)
• T5. Gary Carter (5)
• T5. Jorge Posada (5)
• T5. Joe Mauer (5)
• T5. Salvador Perez (5)

That’s pretty good, but since Parrish and Posada have the same number or one less, it’s not ultimately helpful enough.

Considering also that McCann’s postseason hitting record is poor (.172/.252/.297), the Hall of Fame case that can be made based on the most tangible statistics that we’re used to is weak.

What do the Baseball Reference Leader Boards Say?

There’s no help here, either. According to Baseball Reference’s WAR rankings, Brian McCann (with a 32.0 bWAR) is the 35th-best catcher in MLB history. That’s behind all of the 16 Hall of Fame members who donned the tools of ignorance as their primary position.

Among his contemporaries, McCann is behind Russell Martin (on the current BBWAA ballot for the first time this year), Victor Martinez, and Yadier Molina and far behind Joe Mauer (who is in the Hall of Fame) and Buster Posey (who will be eligible in 2027).

McCann was known as a hitting catcher, evidenced by those 6 Silver Sluggers but no Gold Gloves. Of the 118 backstops with at least 4,000 plate appearances and 50% of their games behind the plate, McCann’s OPS+ (110) is tied for 31st best.

Among Hall of Famers, he’s ahead of only Rick Ferrell, Ray Schalk, and Ivan Rodriguez. Schalk was highly respected for his defense (he threw out 52% of all base runners), while I-Rod won 13 Gold Gloves (with 46% of runners caught stealing). Ferrell is widely considered to be one of the worst of the Veterans Committee selections.

Speaking of the running game, McCann’s record is poor. In his career, he threw out just 25% of all would-be base thieves; in 10 different seasons, he was in the top 5 of stolen bases allowed in the league in which he was playing. It’s because of this that McCann’s overall bWAR is relatively low, with his defense metrics dragging down his rating.

The Art of Pitch Framing

There is one key statistic, one that has only recently become available to the public, that elevates Brian McCann to a potential Hall of Fame candidate. According to the metrics compiled by FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus, McCann was one of the best in the game at helping his pitchers get extra strikes and fewer balls through his ability to frame their pitches.

Before getting into the numbers, let’s think about this in human terms. It’s often said that one of the most difficult things to do in sports is to hit a baseball. A batter has a split second to decide whether to swing or take, using their experience and knowledge to detect if they’re getting a ball in their happy place or if the pitch is about to dart out of the strike zone.

Similarly, it takes an extraordinary amount of experience for a human umpire to correctly make the instantaneous calculation about whether a pitch is a ball or a strike. According to The Sporting News, MLB umpires missed 34,294 ball-strike calls in 2018, an average of 14 missed calls per game. On these borderline calls, the best catchers at pitch framing receive the ball with virtually no perceived movement. If a catcher sets up on the inside corner and has to reach across to catch a ball on the outside of the plate, the jerky motion creates the appearance that the pitcher badly missed his target. That may be true (the pitcher missing his target), but the pitch may have been a strike anyway.

The point to this boring story is that highly intelligent people who could probably work for NASA have been able to quantify how many runs the best pitch framing catchers save or cost their teams by their ability to turn balls into called strikes.

Brian McCann: Pitch Framing Maestro

When calculating Brian McCann’s career fWAR (the FanGraphs version), the value of his pitch framing skills as it applies to his career value is truly stunning.

As we’ve seen, Baseball Reference, which does not include pitch framing in its WAR calculations, lists McCann as the 35th-best backstop of all time, with a 32.0 bWAR.

FanGraphs gives McCann a 52.1 fWAR, which is the 15th highest value for a backstop in baseball history, behind Bench, Carter, Rodriguez, Fisk, Berra, Piazza, Joe Torre, Bill Dickey, Molina, Russell Martin (yes, Russell Martin: more on that to come) along with Ted Simmons, Gabby Hartnett, and Mauer.

Is Brian McCann Really the 15th Best Catcher Ever?

Absolutely NOT. The reason should be fairly obvious if you take the time to think about it. The reason is that we have no idea what the pitch-framing skills were for the likes of Bench, Carter, Berra, or defensive stalwarts of the first half of the 20th century, such as Schalk or Gabby Hartnett. How would Freehan fare? Or Thurman Munson or Bob Boone or Jim Sundberg?

Of course, in today’s game, catchers are keenly aware that framing is a part of their job. To what degree catchers of previous decades were aware of their own abilities to “steal” strikes is unknown.

Anyway, getting into some weeds here, the FanGraphs (FG) version of pitch framing goes back just to 2008 (using PITCHf/x from 2008-14 and Statcast from 2015-19). FG Senior writer Jay Jaffe (one of the leading experts on the Hall of Fame) wrote about McCann’s Hall of Fame case and why pitch framing adds 20 “wins” to his career value.

Unlike HR or RBI, which are exact totals, all versions of WAR are based on an algorithmic formula. With the magic of “enter” on an FG programmer’s keyboard, McCann’s fWAR (through 2018) went from 36.7 to 55.5, vaulting him from “no shot at Cooperstown” to having a legitimate case. Recent updates to the formula have downgraded him to 52.1, still strong for a catcher but not as strong as 55.5, which, in 2019, had him as the 10th-best catcher of all time.

Similarly, on FG, on the 2019 update, Russell Martin’s fWAR rose by 17.2, jumping him from 37.4 to 54.6. Yadier Molina’s also rose from under 40 to 53.2 (and is now 55.6 since his career wasn’t over yet in 2019).

Again, The fWAR for all is slightly different now than they were in 2019 because there have been some adjustments made to the numbers by the human wizards behind the FG curtain.

If you’re curious about why there’s such a stark divide between FanGraphs and Baseball Reference, one of the missions of BR is to allow us to compare players across eras. While there are aspects of the Baseball Reference (BR) WAR calculations that are (by necessity) different in the distant past because of the lack of availability of certain statistics, pitch-framing is such a massive unknown for most of the history of baseball that it makes apples-to-apples comparisons impossible.

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Comparing Brian McCann to his Peers

Since it’s clear that any Hall of Fame case to be made for Brian McCann must start with his pitch-framing skills, we can only compare him to the other top catchers of the past 32 years. In these comparisons, we’re going to include McCann, Molina, Martin (the pitch-framing champs), Piazza, Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, Jason Kendall, Mauer, Posey, Perez, and J.T. Realmuto. Posada, Kendall, Perez and Realmuto are included here because they top McCann in bWAR.

First, let’s forget about pitch framing and WAR for a moment and just look at their hitting stats, caught-stealing percentage, and accolades earned.

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What conclusion can you draw from these numbers? Well, for starters, Rodriguez, Piazza, and Mauer are Hall of Famers for a reason. Molina’s case is simple: 10 All-Star Games, 9 Gold Gloves, and a 40% caught stealing rate. Meanwhile, when you linger on the numbers of Posada and McCann (both former Yankees catchers), Posada was clearly the better hitter. McCann’s edge

Baseball-Reference Advanced Metrics

Let’s look next at the Baseball Reference advanced metrics, including OPS+, bWAR, and the component elements that go into it. For simplicity, I’m going to skip Rodriguez and Piazza here because they’re so obviously on a different level than the rest.

Rbat = runs above or below average due to batting

Rfield = runs above or below average due to fielding

Rbaser = runs above or below average due to baserunning

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What can we learn from these numbers in conjunction with the previous graphic? Well, first of all, Mauer and Posada were terrific hitters. Posey was a superb batsman as well but had a relatively brief career; his Cooperstown resume rests on being a Rookie of the Year, MVP, and leader of a three-time World Series champion.

In addition, among the pitch-framing studs (Molina, Martin, McCann), Yadi is clearly the king defensively when it comes to cutting down runners on the bases. Of the three, McCann was the best hitter, but we already knew that.

Putting this together with the Pitch Framing Stats

So, let’s now get back to the main point, the pitch framing skills of our man of the moment, Brian McCann. and how it alters his overall value compared to his peers of the last 35 years.

This graphic includes numbers gleaned from Jay Jaffe’s piece, along with the current numbers shown on FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus. The first column shows each catcher’s bWAR (from Baseball Reference); the second column displays their fWAR (from FanGraphs, the number you would see if you went to the site today). The third column (“Framing”) shows the estimated number of runs saved by each catcher by combining the numbers from Baseball Prospectus (1988-07) and FG (2008-19). The final column (“Adj fWAR”) is what each backstop’s fWAR would look like if his pitch framing numbers from ’88-’07 were included.

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Note: Kendall, Posada, Realmuto, and Perez do not score well on FanGraphs’ framing metrics and thus are not included in this graphic.

Anyway, what’s interesting here, if you believe the FanGraphs numbers, is that McCann shows up as the 5th best catcher of the 21st century, behind Molina, Martin, Mauer, and Posey. As we’ve seen, if you go by Baseball Reference (which does not include pitch framing), he’s also behind Realmuto and Perez.

What Else Does this Tell us about Brian McCann’s Worth?

McCann’s years as what one might call the “Pitch Framer in Chief” were from 2008-12, when he saved, according to FanGraphs, 133.2 runs from his excellence at stealing (or “revealing”) strikes. If you do a FanGraphs leaderboard for the top players for those five seasons, McCann comes out as the #2 position player in baseball, behind only Albert Pujols, with a 30.6 fWAR.

You read that correctly. According to fWAR, Brian McCann was the 2nd best position player in all of baseball, just behind Pujols. During these five years, Pujols’ slash line was .315/.406/.591 compared to McCann’s .271/.351/.467. Pujols hit 84 more home runs, drove in 177 more runs, and scored 240 more runs. McCann comes close to Prince Albert in fWAR because the pitch-framing numbers cause him to rank as the best defensive player in the game for those five years, slightly ahead of Molina.

Do you believe this, that McCann was the 2nd most valuable position player from 2008-12? If you do, then he’s peak performance a Hall of Famer. Personally, I’m not buying it to that extent, but pitch framing is real, and it’s valuable.

There’s another problem with these numbers. If you look at “Defensive Runs above average” for all position players from 2008-12, the top eight are all catchers, with McCann clocking in with nearly double the value of the best non-catcher (J.J. Hardy).

If those numbers are truly correct, that the top eight defensive backstops were more valuable than every other position player, so be it. Call me skeptical. The creators of WAR consistently tinker with the formulas. It wouldn’t surprise me to create a new board in a year or two and see the numbers come out a little differently.

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Choosing between Molina, McCann, Martin & Posey

As we saw earlier, if you include pitch-framing, there are five 21st-century catchers (McCann, Molina, Martin, Mauer, and Posey) who are head and shoulders above the rest. They all have a fWAR between 52.1 and 55.6. The sixth-best backstop by fWAR (from 2000-24) is Yasmani Grandal, who is way back at 40.0. Posada (whose career began in 1995) is ranked 7th by fWAR from 2000-24 (at 36.2) because of his poor pitch-framing metrics.

This next tidbit is rather stunning. Besides Grandal and Posada, there are only two other catchers from 2000-24 with a fWAR of 30 or above: Jonathan Lucroy (35.2), Realmuto (34.8), and Rodriguez (31.9), who, of course, started his career in 1991. Salvador Perez has a lowly career fWAR of 18.3 because of exceedingly weak framing metrics. That’s a massive divide between the two websites. Baseball-Reference gives him a 35.5 bWAR on the strength of positive fielding metrics (throwing out runners, etc.).

Since Mauer is already in the Hall, if you’re choosing between the other four for the Hall of Fame, how many would you choose, and who would you choose?

Molina seems to have the strongest overall case because he has the hardware (the 9 Gold Gloves) and although his overall batting record is barely average, he’s had multiple big moments in postseason baseball.

As we’ve discussed, Posey’s three rings and MVP trophy are in his favor. Still, he has only 5,607 career plate appearances, which are fewer than all Hall of Fame catchers except for Roy Campanella, whose career ended early due to a car accident and began late due to the color barrier, and Roger Bresnahan,

What if one were to choose between McCann and Martin? The latter outperforms McCann in fWAR, and the adjusted version is based on the pitch framing data, but McCann was clearly a superior hitter. It would be hard for me to rank Martin ahead solely on the basis of the pitch-framing metrics.

Conclusion

OK, we’re over 4,000 words into this piece now. It’s time for the verdict. Does Brian McCann belong in the Hall of Fame? The answer will be perhaps unsatisfying. It’s “no,” but “we don’t really know yet for sure.” Based on traditional criteria that have been mostly used to judge Hall of Fame caliber players for the first 89 years of its existence, McCann doesn’t make the cut.

We are, however, in a new era, one that gives us data that was previously unavailable. This is an era in which players (especially catchers) can create immense value that is mostly hidden from the casual fan. That’s what the pitch framing metrics have done for backstops. McCann has the 15th-highest fWAR among all catchers, but we’ve already established that you can’t use those metrics to compare the catchers of today to the catchers of days gone by.

There’s no chance that McCann (or Martin, for that matter) will get anywhere close to the 75% vote necessary to make the Hall of Fame. The more relevant question is whether either (or both) of them will get at least 5%, allowing them to remain on future ballots. Players are eligible to be on the BBWAA ballot for ten years as long as they keep clearing the 5% bar.

The argument in favor of keeping McCann and Martin on the ballot for ten years is that, by 2034, we may have an additional ten years of pitch-framing data. Will the catching M & M boys (along with Molina) still reign supreme in this evolving metric? Only time can tell.

Of course, one has to wonder whether pitch framing will even matter in five years. Say hello to the robo umps!

Based on the first 103 ballots publicly reported on Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker, both McCann and Martin are “on the bubble.” McCann has gotten five “yes” votes (4.9%), while Martin has earned six (5.8%). Those numbers don’t bode well. Generally, the more analytically minded writers reveal their ballots to Thibodaux while “old-school” writers don’t.

Other Thoughts:

Here are the thoughts of a couple of prominent writers who checked McCann’s name on their ballots:

“A seven-time All-Star who bashed 282 home runs, McCann was a better hitter than Martin (110 to 101 in terms of OPS+), and the two are more or less deadlocked in our version of framing runs (165.7 to 165.6 in Martin’s favor)… I think this discussion is worth continuing in the coming years, and feel it’s particularly important to include both on my ballot.”

— Jay Jaffe, FanGraphs (Dec. 30, 2024)

“McCann’s number one most similar player is the history of the game: Salvador Perez, who I believe is a worthy Hall of Famer. That made me give a second look to McCann’s candidacy…. McCann at the very least belongs on the ballot for multiple years… Seven All-Star teams, six Silver Sluggers, he wins a World Series title with the Astros in 2017… Brian McCann belongs in this conversation of one of the best catchers of his time.”

— Jon Morosi, MLB Network (Jan. 2, 2025)

And one “no” vote who is open to changing his mind. Dave Brown voted for Martin but not for McCann:

“Most of Martin’s Hall-of-Fame case stems from his defense, which Fangraphs ranks as third-best all time among all catchers… Dismissing Martin’s candidacy out of hand, as apparently so many voters have done, is a mistake… McCann was a better hitter than Martin, but not so much better that it makes up for the relative gulf between them on defense… McCann could get my vote in the future, though his best hope probably rests in some long-off era’s committee. Say this: There aren’t many catchers who aren’t in Cooperstown who have clearly better cases than McCann.”

— Dave Brown, Email with explainer (Dec. 30, 2024)

Whatever the ultimate Hall of Fame verdict will be for Brian McCann, he did have an excellent career, one filled with All-Star recognition and one that culminated with a World Series ring in his penultimate season. At least one former teammate feels that McCann belongs in Cooperstown.

“He’s going to be a fixture in this organization for a long time. I’m looking forward to going to his Hall of Fame (induction) — Braves Hall of Fame, and in my opinion the Baseball Hall of Fame, too. One heck of a player. Better person. One of the best offensive catchers I’ve ever seen. Not many catchers can say they had a thousand RBIs in their career. All the accolades — he has them all. Literally has them all. Special, special player.”

— Freddie Freeman (Braves 1B), reported in The Athletic (October 9, 2019)

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