Difficult to forget
Catcher Brian McCann has a good memory of Houston.
Eleven years before he became the team’s primary catcher, Brian McCann’s emergence into the national spotlight came at the detriment of the Astros. In his first career postseason at-bat, a 21-year-old McCann bludgeoned a secondinning pitch from Roger Clemens, sending it over the right-center field wall at Turner Field. The three-run homer broke open Game 2 of the National League Division Series, the lone game in which the Braves prevailed against the pennant winners.
“It’s probably my top memory that I have, being 21 and getting a chance to catch (John Smoltz) and face Roger and getting a 2-0 fastball that I could handle,” McCann said last week. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
Which is saying something. In the decade-plus since, McCann, 32, has stepped into the batter’s box more than 5,700 times and caught in excess of 11,000 innings. He is no longer the perennial All-Star and Silver Slugger Award winner of his Atlanta heyday but is regarded as a solid player and a valuable presence.
Reliable for 20 home runs a season, McCann, a lefthanded batter, is an offensive upgrade for the Astros over the departing Jason Castro, the superior pitch framer. But another reason the team sought McCann is his track record and reputation around a clubhouse.
Leadership skills
Bringing the experience of nine seasons with his hometown Braves and three with the New York Yankees, McCann — as well as newly signed free-agent outfielder Josh Reddick — should help fill the veteran leadership void on a young Astros roster.
“In the game of baseball, I think there’s one component that always gets overlooked because it’s not quantifiable by people,” said Smoltz, the Hall of Famer who mentored McCann in Atlanta. “The perspective that a player can give in a clubhouse, the presence that he can have, the experience that he uses, goes a long way.
“And as a catcher, getting a staff and adjusting to them and being able to get the young pitchers through a game, you take a lot of pride in that. I think you’re going to see Brian even take much more of an effort (in the leadership department) because of the age of some of the pitchers.”
Smoltz, now an MLB Network analyst and postseason color commentator for Fox, said “you won’t find a nicer person” than McCann, whom he described as “like a gentle cubby bear.” The former battery mates remain in touch.
“I just think he’s going to be relieved to know that he’s going to be the guy and it’s going to be a team that he can have his fingerprints on a little more,” Smoltz said.
Supplanted by Sanchez
McCann was no longer “the guy” in New York, where he signed a five-year, $85 million deal before the 2013 season. The Yankees were a veteran-laden team of aging stars when he joined, headlined by Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira. Now? They are retooling their roster around a phenom who plays McCann’s position.
Gary Sanchez’s brilliant 53-game stretch to close 2016 — 20 homers and .657 slugging percentage — meant McCann probably wouldn’t catch more than once or twice a week for New York in 2017.
It was no secret the seven-time All-Star could be had in a trade, and after near-daily conversations for two-plus weeks, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow made a proposal Yankees GM Brian Cashman was comfortable taking to the catcher, who had to approve any deal.
“I want to catch everyday ,” said M cC ann, who caught in 92 of the 130 games in which he appeared last season. “I still feel like I’ve got a lot of good years left behind the plate. It’s one of those things where in New York I was going to catch once a week and DH against righties. I view myself as an everyday catcher, and that was the decision.”
McCann was worth 1.3 wins above replacement last season, according to Fangraphs’ version of the metric, and 3.0 in 2015. He was a league-average hitter over his three seasons in New York, his batting average suffering to a cumulative .235 with the Yankees compared with the .277 he posted over his nine years with the Braves.
His lefthanded bat might miss the short right-field porch in New York, although Minute Maid Park is cozy.
Shifts come into play often
McCann is among the hitters affected most by the increased use of defensive shifts. Over the last five seasons, only David Ortiz and Ryan Howard were shifted against more than McCann.
Defensively, McCann (6-3, 225) is regarded as a good receiver and game caller, though his ability to steal strikes through framing has dropped off since his Atlanta days, according to metrics. He also threw out only 23 percent of base stealers last season, a rate comparable with Castro’s 23.7.
Then there are the intangibles, the unquantifiable effects a catcher who has worked with Smoltz and Tim Hudson and CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka will have on 23-year-olds Lance McCullers and Joe Musgrove and the Astros’ other young pitchers on the cusp of the majors.
During his decorated 21-year career, Smoltz preferred not to mentally walk through a game before it happened — to “pitch a game before I pitch it” — but on Oct. 6, 2005, he felt it important for his young catcher.
Smoltz makes it happen
McCann, summoned from Class AA that June, had started 49 major league games at that point. But there he was catching Smoltz in Game 2 of the NLDS against Clemens and the Astros at Turner Field. Beginning with Craig Biggio to lead off the game, Smoltz explained to McCann how he would throw primarily sliders early in the outing and rely more on his fastball late. Smoltz outlined to McCann how Biggio would strike out on a slider for the game’s first out and the catcher would throw the ball around the horn.
“The first three pitches were sliders, strikes, a swing and a miss, and I could almost see his eyes come through the mask like, ‘Oh my gosh, am I over my skis that this just happened,’ ” Smoltz said. “He just was enamored with the whole experience.
“But then when he hits that three-run homer off of Roger Clemens, I just knew that his heartbeat, even though he was anxious and maybe a little nervous in the beginning, that this kid’s got something special.”
McCann, of course, joins the Astros at a different stage of his career than when he made Clemens pay for a fastball that caught too much of the plate. Three seasons removed from his last All-Star campaign and having racked up a lot of mileage for a player who crouches for a living, he will probably catch four or five games a week next season. He figures to bat anywhere from fifth to eighth in the lineup.
And given his résumé, the Astros hope McCann will provide the veteran presence one of baseball’s youngest but most talented cores requires to take the next step toward a World Series.