He is one of the greatest catchers in Atlanta Braves history, but is he a Baseball Hall of Famer?

Brian McCann is on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year and for many of us, it is hard to believe the baby-faced catcher who was part of the 2005 “Baby Braves” and who took Roger Clemens deep in that season’s playoff series against the Houston Astros has now been retired for five years, making him eligible for Hall of Fame induction.

When McCann left the Atlanta Braves after the 2013 season, he seemed to be on track for what might have been a sure-fire Hall of Fame career. Through his age 29 season, he’d been a seven-time All-Star – including seven of the prior eight seasons – having caught more than 1,100 games with the Braves.

While signing with the New York Yankees was not a popular decision for those in his home state, performing in the epicenter of media with the level of play he had in Atlanta would have only helped his trajectory toward Cooperstown.

Unfortunately for McCann, his offensive output slipped slightly – although he did picked up a Silver Slugger award in 2015. By the time he made his way to the Houston Astros in 2017, where he picked up his only World Series championship as part of that controversial team, he would only have two more seasons left in his career that ended where it started with the Braves in 2019.

Photo by Brian Garfinkel/Getty Images

On the surface, an impartial observer might think that McCann and the Hall of Fame is far-fetched. Through Wednesday, January 15, 2025, McCann was tracking less than the five-percent of the votes needed to remain on the ballot for 2026. If he does fall off the ballot, that will be a shame, because looking at his career through a technologically-focused lens, his career looks quite a bit more impressive. As a catcher – a position whose defensive impact has been historically difficult to quantify; and a position under represented in the Hall of Fame – there is an intriguing argument that his candidacy should be worth a longer-look in the years to come.

First, the notable achievements.

He was a seven-time All-Star, all with Atlanta, and a six-time Silver Slugger Award winner at catcher. He was also an All-Star Game MVP. He twice picked-up league MVP votes – once each in the National League and American League.

From 2006 through 2015, he caught 108 games or more nine times, topping out at 138 games in 2008.

He finished his career with 282 home runs, 1,018 RBI, 1,590 hits and 292 doubles all good for a 110 wRC+. Fangraphs give him credit for 52.1 fWAR in his career – including a four-year run of more than 6.0 fWAR per season beginning with his career-best 8.3 fWAR in 2008.

As MLB.com’s Mark Bowman noted in 2020, McCann was second in overall fWAR for catchers from 2005 through 2013. The only person he trailed was Joe Mauer, who was elected to the Hall of Fame last year.

McCann’s defense – and specifically his pitch framing – is where he makes a step-up toward induction. Throughout his career, he threw out 25-percent of runners attempting to steal and he is credited with 27 defensive runs saved behind the plate.

Jay Jaffe, in his annual Fangraphs article on his Hall of Fame ballot, discusses the importance of framing to McCann’s candidacy – and how he improved his skill dramatically after debuting as a 21-year-old. As noted by Jaffe, although McCann in 35th all time in traditional JAWS (the system Jaffe created to combine a player’s overall performance with his seven-year peak), McCann jumps all the way to seventh when using the pitch-framing-inclusive JAWS.

McCann’s pitch-framing is also cited by Baseball America’s JJ Cooper, who included McCann on his first Hall of Fame ballot. He noted that McCann, like fellow catcher Russell Martin, benefits from the technology available to quantify McCann’s framing skills – technology not available for prior generations of catchers.

There is no argument that Hall of Fame case for Brian McCann is nuanced. He doesn’t have an MVP award nor a batting title – although he did bat .333 in 2006 – on his resume. But to outright dismiss McCann’s viability is short-sighted – and that’s not just a 2025 point-of-view. In 2019, Fangraphs took a deep dive McCann’s career after he announced his retirement, and many of the points made then are still valid today.

McCann will need 14 more ballots to avoid dropping off the ballot after this voting cycle. It will be one of the sub-plots Braves fans will keep an eye on along with the voting on fellow former Braves Andruw Jones and Billy Wagner, each of whom are tracking at-or-above the voting totals needed for election.

If this is the only year on the Hall of Fame ballot for McCann, the Braves legend won’t be the only deserving retired former ballplayer to be one-and-done. Just ask Kenny Lofton, Carlos Delgado or Jim Edmonds about that.

Regardless of the outcome, McCann is undoubtedly one of best catchers of his generation and in the history of the Braves franchise.