Andrew McCutchen was struggling for the first four months of the 2016 season. The Pirates decided to finally bench him at the start of August, sitting him down for three games. Prior to the benching, he was hitting for a .241/.311/.408 line. After he returned, he looked like Andrew McCutchen again, hitting for a .284/.381/.471 line in the final two months of the year.
McCutchen is off to another bad start this year, and this time it’s worse than the 2016 start. He has a .203/.274/.360 line in 190 plate appearances. The Pirates have decided to bench him earlier this year, sitting him down in the last two games, once in favor of Danny Ortiz.
It’s impossible to say whether the benching last year led to McCutchen putting up better numbers down the stretch, or whether the same type of benching will do the same thing for him this year. But the Pirates need to hope they see a repeat of last year’s 180-style turnaround after McCutchen returns from his current break.
In the short-term, the Pirates need the old McCutchen back if they want any chance at competing this year. They lost their top two performers from 2016 when Jung Ho Kang couldn’t get a visa and when Starling Marte was suspended for PEDs. Most of their other players have been struggling this year, and most of the top performers have gone down with injuries. Getting McCutchen back on track would be a big boost for the 2017 Pirates.
But this whole situation makes you think about the long-term, specifically with the question of whether the Pirates will now be able to get any kind of value at all for McCutchen.
The entire offseason was surrounded by McCutchen trade rumors. The attempt to trade McCutchen made total business sense for the Pirates, as it could have allowed them to cash in on a big name player, get a nice return for their future, and eventually replace him with Austin Meadows. The rumors said they were close to a deal with the Nationals on Tuesday night of the winter meetings, but Washington ended up trading for Adam Eaton of the White Sox. That essentially ended the McCutchen talks over the offseason.
That near-deal may have been the last chance for the Pirates to get value for McCutchen. I wrote a primer over the offseason looking at everything surrounding a potential McCutchen trade, including the idea of “selling low” on him. From the article:
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The focus on the down year ignores the value of the extra year of control. Let’s assume that a lowered value for McCutchen is equal to 4.0 WAR per year. That’s more than he had last year, but less than he had in the previous five years. And realistically, McCutchen isn’t going to fall below that due to one down year, all because of his name value. If a down year equaled 4.0 WAR per year, then McCutchen would have a trade value of $35.9 M.
Let’s say that McCutchen bounces back for the Pirates in 2017, and they trade him next off-season at a value of 6.0 WAR. While he would have more value, the trade value would remain about the same. His trade value for one year in 2018, at 6.0 WAR, would be $33.7 M. So the return would be about the same.
You could argue that they’d get more value on that side by getting his production for the 2017 season. If he returns to being a 6.0 WAR player, then they would be getting about $34 M in value from him for his production in 2017.
The flip side to this is wondering what happens if he has another bad year. I don’t want to project him at another replacement level year, but let’s say he drops down to a 3.0 WAR in 2017. With two down years in a row, you’re less likely to get a favorable return for him next off-season. At that point, a 3.0 WAR trade value would be $9.7 M, which is barely enough for a prospect just inside the top 100. You’d get $10 M in value in 2017, but overall, you’d see a loss, and an even bigger loss in the long-term when you factor in the decline in future value from the prospects.
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The sad thing right now is that a 3.0 WAR in 2017 and a trade return of a guy just inside the top 100 prospects at the end of the year sounds like a dream. I didn’t want to project McCutchen for replacement level for the second straight year, but that’s what he has been so far. He currently has a -0.1 fWAR, and while that can change from now until the end of the season, it is becoming obvious that McCutchen isn’t the old Andrew McCutchen anymore.
McCutchen’s stats are in a decline almost across the board. His strikeout rate has risen every year since 2013, going from 15% to 21.2% last year. He’s seen a bit of a drop this year, but is still at 18.4%.
His walk rate has consistently been in the double digits, but dropped to 10.2% last year and is down to 8.9% this year.
His power is in a steady decline. He had a .226 ISO in 2012, dropped to .190 in 2013, and went back to .228 in 2014. From there he dropped to .196, .174, and is at .157 this year.
His hard contact has gone from the 40% range in 2013-14 to 31.2% this year, after dropping to 35.8% last year.
His BABIP was in the .350 range around 2013-14. It has since dropped to .339 in 2015, .297 last year, and .220 this year. This year’s number may be low, and a bit of poor luck. However, I think the overall decline has to do with his speed.
You can see the drop in speed when looking at the stolen bases. He used to be a guy who would attempt 30+ steals a year, and steal 20+ bags per year. In 2014 he went 18-for-21. He went 11-for-16 the following year, seeing the attempts and efficiency go down. He was 6-for-13 last year, bottoming out. This year he is 5-for-6, which is encouraging, but he’s still not showing the speed he had when he entered the league.
McCutchen didn’t like that the Pirates put Starling Marte in center field and moved him to right field this year. He proclaimed that center field was his spot after returning to the position. But the Pirates were right to make the move, as his defense has been on a steady decline the past few years, bottoming out last year when he was the worst center fielder in the game. He currently has a -1.5 UZR/150 and a -6 DRS this year since moving back to the spot.
There might be some signs of hope for McCutchen. His stolen bases, defense, and strikeouts aren’t as bad as last year. His BABIP should improve going forward. But these signs of hope come with the disclaimer that the 2016 season was a low bar for McCutchen.
McCutchen isn’t showing any signs that he’s the Andrew McCutchen of old. Any hope that the 2016 season was just a fluke, and that he would return to being a 6+ WAR player per season are now gone. The hope now is that he hasn’t just completely bottomed out to become a replacement level player.
The Pirates tried unloading McCutchen before this could happen. It didn’t work, and now they might have some tough decisions to make in the future.
That has started by benching him for a few games, and the hope is that he returns and responds the same way he did after being benched last year.
But if McCutchen doesn’t bounce back, the Pirates might get in a situation where they’re just looking for any kind of return based on his name value, or a swap of similar contracts, looking for a bounce back player in a similar situation.
And if none of that happens, I think we’ve started to enter the area of discussion where it could be possible for the Pirates to just decline McCutchen’s $14 M option next year and take the $1 M buyout, which is a suggestion that would have been unfathomable just two years ago.
What makes this even more difficult is that this situation is a PR nightmare for the Pirates. McCutchen was the franchise player, which creates a weird fan dynamic. He was being booed at PNC Park during the 2016 season, despite all previous production. Many of those same fans were then booing the Pirates over the offseason for trying to trade him away. Now, the Pirates will be seen as missing an opportunity to deal him before it was too late, and when they eventually do part ways with him, it will be seen as a bad move, just because it means the end of the line for a fan favorite who was one of the best performers in franchise history.
This was always a no-win situation for the Pirates. The hope they had in the past was that they could salvage the situation with a good trade return, making you forget about McCutchen by pointing to what they got for him, and pointing to his replacement in Austin Meadows. They can still point to Meadows, but it’s looking unlikely that they’ll have a nice return, or any return at all, to ease the pain of eventually parting with McCutchen.
