Showing some appreciation for Russell Martin and Brian McCann

The 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame inductees were announced earlier this week, featuring Ichiro Suzuki, and a couple of southpaws in CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner. Two first-ballot sure things and a final year candidate who is one of the best relievers of all time made for a not-so surprising class, in a good way. With those three gaining entrance in Cooperstown, there are always even more falling off the ballot with less than five percent of the vote. Among those victims this year, were a couple of former Yankee catchers: Russell Martin and Brian McCann.

Calling this some sort of travesty would be a stretch: they were excellent players for a long time, though their impact and value often came on the periphery of what can be easily seen or quantified. That doesn’t, however, change how valuable they really were, and how ultimately underappreciated their careers seem to have gone.

Martin joined the Yankees for the 2011-12 seasons, following a surprising non-tender from the Dodgers. And though it may not be considered his career-defining stretch, it once again solidified his role as one of the game’s more influential catchers before he moved on to playoff teams in Pittsburgh and Toronto. McCann began his time in the Bronx a bit further into his career, and was a similarly valuable part of the team for his three years in pinstripes from 2014-16, playing in at least 130 games in all of them.

Going purely on numbers, the cases of these two are even more eye-popping than one might expect. Based on FanGraphs WAR, Martin ranks 11th and McCann 15th all-time among catchers. That’s nothing to sneeze at under any circumstances, but this does come with one major caveat. FanGraphs introduced framing (retroactively to 2008) in 2019, which bolted Martin and McCann up the leaderboards, both of whom are regarded as excellent pitch-framers. It’s something Jay Jaffe covered well in his Hall pieces for each of the backstops here and here.

So of course, it’s simply unreasonable to compare their 50+ fWAR career marks to those of say, Bill Dickey or Gabby Hartnett. But, I also don’t think it’s entirely fair to dismiss what these more recent catchers accomplished, the degree to which we understand far better now.

These cases also don’t take place entirely on the margins of strike zone, or the game as a whole, either. McCann was a seven-time All-Star (and ASG MVP), six-time Silver Slugger, once went nine straight years with 20 or more home runs (and 10-of-11), and won a World Series with Houston in 2017. Meanwhile Martin went to four Midsummer Classics, won a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove in 2007, and helped lead three different teams to the postseason in six consecutive seasons following his already-successful tenure with the Dodgers. They both had excellent careers, the peaks of which rival nearly all of their great contemporaries.

That is precisely where their argument can be made: in comparison to the other catchers of their era. Joe Mauer, who gained election to the Hall on his first ballot does have some more significant hardware, but is sandwiched between Martin and McCann in career fWAR (negligible differences), and ultimately played over a third of his games as a only decent offensive first baseman. Yadier Molina will certainly get some Hall of Fame love, if not a speedy election, and he only accrued a hair more fWAR in well over 400 more games than either of his counterparts laid out here. Although there is value in being out there, there is a solid argument that Martin and McCann were simply better players.

Even elsewhere, there are figures that pop out. Consider Russell Martin’s matching wRC+ with Ivan Rodriguez, or McCann’s eighth-most home runs at the position — these two were no joke, going even beyond just players who made up all their value from a lesser understood aspect of the game.

No matter what can be said about Russell Martin and Brian McCann, they received just a total of 16 votes between the two of them, and fell off of the ballot in their first appearance. While they are far from rock solid candidates, they likely deserved some more time on the ballot for consideration.

Their cases also raise some interesting questions about what we consider in these debates, like if we’re actually holding these statistical developments against players in some way. As more and more information about the game becomes measurable, it will be interesting to see how we look back at Russell Martin’s, Brian McCann’s, or any other similar player’s case as it relates to the Hall.