The Mets need a catcher along with six or seven other teams. There is only one J.T. Realmuto so someone will strikeout on the prize of the offseason.

The next best option on the offensive side would be James McCann. McCann hit .276/.334/.474 over two seasons with the White Sox. In his 2020 season, he hit .289/.360/.536 with a .378 wOBA and a 144 wRC+. Perhaps that is a little too optimistic, but his slash the last two years is well above league average for his position.

The bigger reason as to why the White Sox splurged for Yasmani Grandal last offseason (and hence why McCann will be heading elsewhere) is because of his poor framing numbers. McCann’s career runs saved from framing is -36.4. Something interesting happened in 2020 though, McCann’s runs saved from framing was +2.3. It was a considerably smaller sample size than previous years but I tend to try and find out if things are legitimate changes.

The first piece of evidence that McCann might have changed for the good came from James Fegan of The Athletic. The article is from January of 2020. The White Sox had just the best catcher in baseball, largely because of the defensive upgrade he brought.

McCann decided to go see catching guru, Jerry Narron. McCann told The Athletic: “Up to this point in my career, I’ve never really had anyone who was able to explain to me why the scoring worked the way that it did as far as the framing metrics go and how to improve.”

Matt Kelly of MLB.com tweeted out a video of McCann being able to steal strikes for his pitchers in 2020:

What seemed interesting to me was McCann’s pre-pitch setup. His right leg is basically bent while his left is in a near split. I’ve been watching a lot of tape on McCann’s pre-pitch setups today and I’m struggling to find an example of him not bending either of his knees and doing a split with the other leg. He specifically does this when there are no runners on base. Doing so essentially gets him into a much lower setup and allows him to steal strikes at the lower half of the zone. I’ll show two examples, one from 2020 and one from 2018.

Here’s 2020 (video courtesy of Baseball Savant):

Here’s 2018 (video courtesy of Baseball Savant):

McCann’s height puts him at a disadvantage for pitches low in the zone. Matt Kelly of MLB.com highlighted this very thing in an article. He was also kind enough to provide a link to his Statcast Catcher Framing. This shows McCann’s pitch framing breakdown per each zone. Getting pitches on the corner has never been an issue for McCann. The problem was pitches low in the zone would often go against him.

Last year, McCann got the pitch on the bottom-middle part of the plate 44.1% of the time. This year he got them 61.8% of the time. That’s a fairly dramatic change and I think his lower setup is definitely a big reason as to why he turned that number around.

Let’s make one thing clear. James McCann is not better than Realmuto. He is absolutely not. If the Mets decided to go get McCann because it means they’re getting Trevor Bauer and George Springer, I am all for it.

The whole point of this article was to essentially say: He is not a bad option and his defensive breakout might be legitimate.