McCann reaches coveted service time and wants to keep going

One of the most important milestones for James McCann was reached last month when he accrued 10 years of major league service time, a feat accomplished by roughly seven percent of players. He qualified for the fully vested portion of the pension. And if he stayed with the same team for five years, he’d have the power to veto any trade.

The last part probably won’t happen with McCann, who celebrated his 34^th birthday in June. The four-year deal he signed with the Mets expires after the season, and he’s spent the last two with the Orioles after they traded for him on Dec. 21, 2022.

McCann is focused on the last month of the regular season and trying to win another division title, but he confirmed over the weekend that he wants to play next season. He isn’t ready to retire.

“My body feels good,” he said. “I haven’t really put an end date in sight. I feel like right now I’m focused on the task at hand and helping this team advance to the playoffs and beyond. But the future is something we can’t control and it’s something that I’ve preached for a long time in my career is control what you can control. So I try not to dwell on what the future holds too much.”

So he intends to keep playing?

“Yeah, yeah,” he said.

Perhaps with the Orioles?

“Wherever I’m given a major league uniform,” he said, smiling.

McCann had 6-year-old twin sons Christian Thomas and Kane Timothy with him in Colorado. He rolled ground balls to them and later filled plates of food for their own pregame meal, setting them up on clubhouse couch with Cedric Mullins and Adley Rutschman. They make the occasional appearance at Camden Yards, where McCann is enjoying this phase of his baseball life.

Rutschman is set as the regular catcher, but McCann has made 54 starts behind the plate this season to match last year’s total. A fastball to the face couldn’t remove him from the lineup. He kept playing with a busted nose and closed left eye.

The Orioles can go in a variety of directions with their backup in 2025, and that includes negotiating a free-agent deal with McCann – maybe one year with an option if he’s willing, while Samuel Basallo continues his development at Triple-A.

Basallo turned 20 last month and MLB Pipeline ranks him as the No. 2 prospect in the system and 10^th in baseball. He played in his sixth game with the Norfolk Tides last night and their season concludes Sept. 22. Breaking camp with the Orioles next spring would be a tremendous leap.

The Orioles could bring in another veteran or stay in-house with a more experienced catcher than Basallo. The position wasn’t on their shopping list last winter beyond depth moves, but McCann’s pending free agency alters their priorities.

The Mets signed McCann for $40.6 million over four years and agreed to pay the remaining $19 million on his contract after trading him to the Orioles for a player to be named later, Dominican Summer League first baseman/outfielder Luis De La Cruz, who hasn’t played in two years. McCann hit .220/.282/.328 with 13 home runs in 182 games with New York, but his new team places high value on his work behind the plate and leadership.

McCann heard a smattering of boos when he returned to Citi Field last month. He hit a two-run homer into the second deck in left field in a 9-5 win wedged between a pair of walk-off losses.

"I’ve said it before, things just didn’t go the way I expected,” he said that night. “Things happen for a reason. I’m at peace with that. I trust God’s plan. Do I wish that things had gone differently? Absolutely. I wish that it would have been the opposite but it wasn’t and there’s nothing I can do about it now."

McCann can control his future. He’s going to catch in 2025. And he’ll do it after clearing the coveted bar for service time.

“It’s what you set out to do,” he said. “From the time you’re a rookie, that’s what you hear the veterans talking about is getting to 10 years and how that’s the biggest accomplishment when it comes to reaching full pension and all that. But at the same time for me, it went by quick. The days are long and the years are short, and it’s very true.

“There’s times in the season when it drags by. There’s times when you’re going through a slump and you can’t wait to get out on the other side and it feels like it lasts forever. But when you look back, shoot, Sept. 1, 2014 was when I debuted, and to think here we are 10 years later, it just doesn’t seem right. It seems like I blinked and here we are. But it’s something that I think this offseason and even one day when I’m done playing, I’ll look back and I’ll probably have been words to describe what it means to me. But for now, the day that you put on a major league uniform for the first time, that’s what you’re fighting for is for 10 years.”