Atlanta Braves Franchise best catchers: Del Crandall
By Fred Owens
Crandall and Atlanta Braves Brian McCann
The Boston Braves did something the Atlanta Braves wouldn’t do, they dropped the new high school grad straight into AAA-ball. Predictably he struggled at the plate, and the team dropped him two levels to C-ball, where a hitting coach made him play pepper every day. Crandall regained his stroke and finished the season batting .304 with 15 homers in 485 AB.
At this point, Crandall’s career and Brian McCann’s begin to parallel each other. Boston moved him up to B-ball in 1949, roughly the equivalent of AA, where McCann started the 2006 season for the Atlanta Braves.
Atlanta Braves
After 48 games with AA Mississippi, Atlanta Braves’ backup catcher Eddie Perez developed shoulder tendonitis and went on the disabled list.
In retrospect, his tendonitis might well have developed because Perez was batting .211 with a .652 OPS, and their other catching option, Brayan Pena, wasn’t known as a good hitter. Whatever the real reason, McCann was batting .265 with an .824 OPS and came to Atlanta to stay.
After 38 games in Evansville, Crandall was batting .351 with eight homers; and Boston Braves’ primary catcher, Phil Masi, was batting .210 with a .531 OPS.
Masi was a good defensive catcher, and had hit pretty well for Boston; he just missed our ranking list and deserves an honorable mention.
Boston traded Masi to the Pirates and brought Crandall up to backup Bill Salkeld — just as McCann backed up Johnny Estrada.
Like McCann for Atlanta, Crandall provided both offense and defense for Boston, batting .263/.291/.368/.660 with four homers in 67 games. He finished second in Rookie of the year voting behind Don Newcombe and earned a spot on The Sporting News Rookie All-Star team. Like BMac in 2005, Crandall was up to stay.