Braves 2009 Season in Review: Brian McCann

More photos » by Gregory Smith - AP Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann... a slugger? Browse more photos » They say that every player is affected to some degree by where he bats in the lineup, and it seems that the slugger's mentality of the cleanup spot began to sink into Brian McCann as the season went along. The common generalization about McCann is that he began to wear down in the second half, but his numbers don't completely bear that out. He didn't wear down, he became more of a homerun hitter and a run producer and all of the strikeouts and ills that go with it. The numbers are very slight, and maybe it's just the extra luck of another homerun or two a month, but before the All-Star break McCann was hitting 2 or 3 homers a month, and after the break he was hitting 4 or 5 a month. The RBIs also followed, with no month over 15 before the break, and every month after the break over 20 RBIs per month. The result was that in the same number of g...