After suffering a partial Achilles tear in his left leg, Andrew McCutchen’s bounce-back, return-to-home season in a Pirates uniform is over. After stints with the Giants, Yankees, Phillies, and Brewers, Cutch came back to the Steel City on a one-year deal to put on a typical Cutch performance over a five-month stretch. Sure, the 36-year-old was never going to replicate his otherworldliness during the early 2010s, when he made five straight All-Star Games from 2011-2015 and won the 2013 NL MVP, but he did make sure that one thing would stay consistent: his consistency.
I remember that 2013 MVP year for McCutchen quite well. The Pirates would go on to break their 20-year playoff drought and play a memorable Wild Card Game against the Reds (CUEEEETTOOOOOOO). That entire Pirates squad was fun to watch, but Cutch was a marvel. While he didn’t excel in any particular stat, it all aggregated into a league-leading .952 OPS and, yes, the NL MVP. It was the first time I or anyone, really, can remember when Wins Above Replacement was a pivotal talking point during awards season. Dandy Andy’s 7.8 bWAR led the league in ’13, and while I’m sure no one could tell you what specific components went into that number (yes, I don’t like WAR, sue me), it established McCutchen’s stamp on the season as the truest all-around hitter in the sport. The success of that 2013 season was never replicated, but Cutch continued to be, well, himself in all facets of the game, even as he bounced around the league in his early 30s.
Entering this season, McCutchen’s stats represented a model of consistency, time-wise and stats-wise. From his rookie year in 2009 through 2022, he averaged 20 homers, 72 RBIs, and 139 hits a season, while posting a .277/.369/.469 slash line, good for an .838 OPS and a cumulative OPS+ of 129. Unfortunately, he’s no Hall of Famer, but I think any hitter would pay huge sums of money to put up those numbers year-over-year for over a decade. And it’s not like he overcompensated the bad aspects of his game for good ones. He’s just seriously all-around. Even his strikeout and walk rates are respectable. So, what did he do in his curtain call year in western Pennsylvania? In 112 games, McCutchen batted .256 with a .378 OBP, 12 homers, and 43 RBIs. He also posted a .776 OPS, good for a 2023 OPS+ of 111, and accumulated 1.4 bWAR. For a 36-year-old in the twilight of his career, I’d say that’s pretty good, especially compared to the last years of fellow 2010s stars Miguel Cabrera and Adam Wainwright.
The 2023 Pirates started off hot and then cooled off Pirates-style, but if they stayed at least in the Wild Card race through July, Cutch would’ve been a much bigger talking point throughout the season. His chase rate and walk rates both ranked above the 95th percentile per Baseball Savant, allowing him to cultivate success despite a diminishing power stroke. But even despite his aging, one home run every 10 games is not something to snooze at, and again, despite his aging, he was a tough out. Just look at that on-base percentage! .378 is a good ten points above his career mark and his best single-season OBP since his initial stint in Pittsburgh.
It's funny to say that Andrew McCutchen would be a great player to build a franchise around, but when you look at everything that he can do, it’s not that far-fetched. Or at least he’s the quintessential archetype to build a franchise around. If you want to translate that into announcer-talk, McCutchen is the type of player that can beat you in a bunch of different ways, at one time with pure skill, but now with veteran savviness. In analytics-talk, he’s the first modern Mr. WAR, a successor to Joe Morgan and a predecessor to what Mike Trout would become shortly after Cutch’s 2013 MVP. Ronald Acuna, Julio Rodriguez, and Juan Soto owe their reputations as all-around guys to Cutch, and if you think that prime Andrew McCutchen was good, just you wait for the all-around, consistent primes of those guys!
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