Brian McCann

Brian McCann signed with the New York Yankees in November 2013 as a seven-time All-Star, and he never made another All-Star team again -- not once, in three full seasons, while hitting 69 home runs and anchoring a catching position that badly needed anchoring. That's not really a knock on him. It's more a reminder of how brutal the AL East is on a guy who'd spent nine years as the best hitting catcher in the National League (his words might differ, but the stat sheet doesn't). McCann arrived with a five-year, $85 million deal and left three years later on a trade that quietly set up the rest of the Yankees' catching future.

Nine Years an Atlanta Institution First

Before he ever put on pinstripes, McCann was already a made man in Atlanta. Braves' second-round pick in 2002, big-league debut in June 2005 (2-for-3 with an RBI, because of course it was), and from 2006 through 2011 he made six straight All-Star teams -- a seventh came in 2013, his final season with the Braves. He won the 2010 All-Star Game MVP with a bases-clearing three-run double in the seventh inning at Angel Stadium, picked up five Silver Sluggers, and became the first Braves player ever named to the NL All-Star squad in each of his first three seasons. All seven of his career All-Star selections came with Atlanta, for what it's worth -- worth being precise about, since it's the exact reason the Yankees went and signed him.

What the Yankees Were Buying

The Yankees needed a left-handed power bat behind the plate, and they needed someone who could handle a pitching staff that still had CC Sabathia and a young Masahiro Tanaka on it. McCann checked both boxes on paper. The deal, finalized December 3, 2013, came with a full no-trade clause and a vesting option that could've pushed the total to $100 million (a clause that would matter a lot more than anyone realized at signing).

His Yankees debut came on Opening Day 2014, April 1st, on the road against a rebuilding Houston Astros team fresh off 111 losses. (Nobody in that ballpark had any idea how that specific opponent would bookend his time in New York.) McCann went on to hit .232 with 23 homers and 75 RBI that first year -- solid, unspectacular, the kind of season that made you wonder if the power would ever fully translate outside Atlanta.

Then came 2015, and it did. McCann hit .232/.320/.437 with 26 home runs and 94 RBI, led all of baseball's catchers in homers, and won his sixth career Silver Slugger -- becoming the first catcher in MLB history to win the award in both the American League and National League. That's a genuinely rare piece of trivia, and it doesn't get brought up nearly enough.

One Playoff Game, and It Wasn't Kind

The 2015 Yankees made the AL Wild Card Game on October 6th -- their first postseason trip since 2012 -- and lost 3-0 to, of all teams, the Houston Astros. McCann went 0-for-4 and grounded out to a rookie shortstop named Carlos Correa for the final out of the season. It was the only playoff game he ever played as a Yankee. Thirteen months later he'd be wearing an Astros uniform himself, which is either fate having a sense of humor or just how baseball works sometimes.

Sanchez Shows Up, and the Math Changes

Gary Sanchez got called up on August 3, 2016, and did the thing rookies aren't supposed to do -- he immediately looked like a freakin' better everyday option than the established veteran. McCann still played a full 2016 season (.242/.335/.413, 20 homers, 58 RBI), but the writing was already on the wall behind the plate. On November 17, 2016, the Yankees traded him to Houston for two pitching prospects, Albert Abreu and Jorge Guzman, and kicked in $5.5 million a year toward what he was still owed. McCann waived the no-trade clause he'd negotiated three years earlier to make it happen -- proof he knew exactly where things stood in New York.

The Ring, Eventually

McCann won his only World Series ring with Houston in 2017, paired behind the plate with Evan Gattis. I'm not going to pretend that title doesn't come with an asterisk in my head (the trash cans, the sign-stealing, the whole 2020 investigation that cost Houston draft picks and got two people suspended) -- but McCann's own name was never part of that story, and he'd earned a ring after 12 years of trying. He played two seasons in Houston, went home to Atlanta for one last ride in 2019, and retired on October 10th that year, right after the Braves got bounced from the NLDS. Fifteen years, .262 average, 282 home runs, 1,018 RBI. Just not one of those All-Star appearances came while he was ours.

He spent three years as a Yankee sandwiched between a Hall-of-fame-caliber run in Atlanta and a championship in Houston, which is a strange kind of career geography -- the good stuff bookending both sides of the Bronx chapter instead of living inside it. New York got a professional, durable, still-productive catcher who did the job he was signed to do. He just never got the parade to go with it.