MIAMI – He's been a National League All-Star six times and won five Silver Slugger awards, but surprisingly, Brian McCann had never won an NL Player of the Week award.
The Braves catcher could cross that off the list Monday, when he and Cincinnati Reds pitcher Homer Bailey were named National League co-Players of the Week.
McCann led the majors with a .600 average and 15 hits during the week, and led the NL with an .880 slugging percentage. Bailey threw the first no-hitter in the majors this season.
For McCann, the week was part of a torrid stretch in which he batted .512 with nine extra-base hits (three homers) and 11 RBIs over 11 games before Monday, raising his average 75 points. He was 19-for-32 (.594) with eight extra-base hits during an eight-game hitting streak before Monday’s series opener at Miami.
The 29-year-old catcher missed the first month of the season completing rehabilitation from shoulder surgery for a torn labrum that hindered him during much of a career-worst 2012 season.
“Last year was a battle,” said McCann, who tried to play through the injury and posted career lows in average (.230), on-base percentage (.300) and slugging percentage (.399). “I mean, everything I tried to do to be successful just didn’t work.
“I knew my best baseball is ahead of me. I knew I had this in me. Now I just want to keep going and finish out the season on a high note.”
He has silenced some skeptics, showing he can hit like before, now that he’s healthy and has enough at-bats to get his swing where he wants it. McCann was regarded as the best-hitting catcher in the NL from 2006 until he slumped after returning too soon from an oblique injury in August 2011, when the shoulder was also aching at times.
The Georgia native is in the final year of his contract and is eligible for free agency after the season.
He went 9-for-12 during the weekend series at Philadelphia and entered Monday with a .304 average, 10 homers, 28 RBIs, a .386 OBP and .540 slugging percentage in 48 games. McCann hasn’t finished a season with a higher batting average or on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.926) since 2006, when he hit .333 with a .961 OPS in his first full season, and as an All-Star and Silver Slugger winner at 22.
“I feel good,” McCann said. “I’ve felt really good basically all year. I mean, I had a two-week period where I didn’t feel good, but when I first got (off the DL) I felt great. And the last week or so I’ve been feeling really good at the dish.”
He came off the DL May 6 and hit .281 with six homers, 14 RBIs and a .614 slugging percentage in his first 16 games, then struggled with a .180 average and one homer in 61 at-bats over his next 21 games through June 21. He played two out of every three or four games for most of that stretch.
He had a three-hit game with a grand slam June 23 at Milwaukee, but didn’t have another hit in his next eight at-bats including a groundout his first time up June 29 against Arizona’s Ian Kennedy. McCann said after that was when things started to click. He had two hits later that day, the beginning of his eight-game hitting streak.
“After I rolled over on 2-0 changeup against Ian Kennedy in my first at-bat,” he said, “that was kind of like my sign that I was using too much of my body, and I said, I don’t care what happens the rest of the day, I’m just going to use my hands. And I ended up getting a hit here, a hit there, got more comfortable as the days went on.
“Now I’m just trying to work counts, get pitches to hit, and I’m barreling it. For the next game or two I was making adjustments using my hands, and it kind of evolved to where I’m at now. It’s been good.”
