From Superstar to Bench Warmer: Andrew McCutchen's Demise

Remember Dale Murphy, the Braves' star center fielder who stood atop the baseball mountain from 1982 to 1987? He hit 45% better than average, smashed 36 homers a year, won five Gold Gloves and two MVPs, and was headed to Cooperstown.

Then, at age 32, he turned into a pumpkin. In his last six seasons, he hit just .234/.307/.396 with just 88 homers. He stole the same number of bases in those six seasons as he had in '87 alone (16) but was caught four more times (10). He moved to right field as his glove got ragged and he never sniffed the Hall.

The same thing appears to have happened to Andrew McCutchen, except in a much shorter period of time. Year before last, he was a certified superstar, a five-tool highlight reel and a perennial top 5 MVP candidate. He hit .313/.404/.523 for the four years corresponding with his age 25-28 seasons, while commanding center field and delivering 26 WAR. He won the MVP in 2013 and was even better in '14. The woebegone Pirates made the playoffs.

McCutchen wasn't the same last year, at age 29, and the whispers began. His fielding was, by all accounts, no longer tolerable in center. His hitting waned to .259/.336/.430, below average for an outfielder. And the Bucs stayed home in October.

Most confoundingly, there didn't seem to be any underlying injury to blame for the slippage. Pitchers just seemed to be able to get him out. Or maybe he was just hiding something.

So 2017 has bloomed with Cutch in right field. His fielding has ticked up so far. And his hitting has ticked further down. Now it's early, but there's no sign of the guy who, just two years ago, finished fifth in MVP balloting. He's hitting .235/.321/.435, almost all of it against lefties.

So now the talk has begun: is Cutch a platoon player? Is he a fourth outfielder? Was that it? He's 30 years old!

It's only early May and McCutchen might bounce back to his old form. But every day he's just ordinary is another piece of data suggesting that's what he now is. It's a mighty, and mighty quick, fall for a guy who was the face of the game just yesterday.

Infrequently Asked Questions

You have questions? I have answers. Some of them are even right answers.

These are the questions baseball fans have been sending my way lately:

Q. Can the Indians return to the World Series next year?
A. Which is to say, can they make the playoffs? Fo' shizzle. Their two injured starters return to join my Cy Young pick, Cory Kluber, and Trevor Bauer is poised to take the next step. They lose Mike Napoli's bat but add by subtraction in the field. If Michael Brantley can return to anything like his 2015 self in 2017, and Lindor, Naquin and Ramirez avoid catastrophic sophomore slumps, they could be even better. With the Royals, White Sox and Twins reeling, only the Detroits have the stuff to challenge Believeland.

Q. When does the Yankees' rebuild pay off?
A. Sooner than any of us want it to. They very likely have the best Minor League system in baseball today, and that's even after Gary Sanchez and Greg Bird made The Show.

Q. Should the Mets sign Yoenis Cespedes?
A. It's not my money, so sure! The Amazins can hurl with anyone, particularly with Gsellman in the mix and a potential Wheeler bounce-back, but they have fewer bats than an aquarium. Getting Neil Walker back is nice, but the Mets had better sign someone who can thump or the fans will be doing the hurling. They can sign Cespedes for some gargantuan contract that he won't be worth, once again playing three left fielders in their outfield. But who's the alternative -- DH Edwin Encarnacion? DH-in-waiting Jose Bautista?

Q. Which is the worst team in baseball next year?
A. i wouldn't bet against the Reds.

Q. What should the Jays do about their two big free agents?
A. Toronto is in a pickle. Lose Bautista and Encarnacion and there go 70 home runs out the door. Each is expecting the kind of deal that could sink a team as they age poorly. The Blue Jays are too good to punt and too smart to bankrupt the future on a 36-year-old defensive liability. I think the brass are hoping the market for Bautista cools and they can reclaim him for a reasonable amount.

Q. Is Andrew McCutchen over?
A. Boy, that would be precipitous -- from the game's most dynamic player to replacement level in one year. Regression to the mean suggests he'll be a 3-4 win player next season -- very good, but not the 'Cutch we knew. After that he's 31.

Q. How good can the Mets be next season? They were ravaged by injuries in '16 but overperformed; could they get a lot better and win fewer games in '17?
A. Depends on the sticks. The lineup they have today couldn't beat O'Neil's Texaco from the Bay Village Little League. They need to find some lumber, whether from inside the roster or plucked off another one. Add some scoring to 140 starts out of deGrom, Syndergaard, Gsellman, Harvey, Wheeler and Matz, and they're a serious World Series contender.

Q. Is there anyone on the free agent wire who can help my Orioles pitching staff?
A. Zippo, zilch, nada, nuttin, nil. Rich Hill's the best moundsman out there and he's 37 with 24 good starts in his pocket.

Q. Are we forgetting about Buster Posey?
A. Who? His output dipped 50 points of OPS in his age 29 season but he's still an above-average hitter with mad framing skills who was worth four wins to the Giants. He's a Hall of Fame argument, depending on how he ages, and still one of the best receivers in the game. It wouldn't surprise me if he hit .300 next year with a bump in home runs and 5+ wins of value.

Q. Who is the most under-rated player in baseball?
A. There are two variables in that question, one of which is, how is a particular player "rated." For the past two years I've touted Marlins outfielder Christian Yelich. The low-key 24-year-old has a Gold Glove, a Sliver Slugger and a .293/.368/.483 batting line over a three-and-a-half year career. 

Q. Didn't Ian Kinsler sort-of get his wish?
A. When the Rangers flipped him to Detroit for Prince Fielder before the 2014 season, Kinsler called GM Jon Daniels a "sleazeball" and wished a 0-162 record on Texas. Since then, he's added 18 wins and a division title to the Tigers, but Texas has won its division each of the last two seasons, even as injuries ended Fielder's career prematurely. So assuming Kinsler hates the Rangers and not Prince Fielder, all he has is the satisfaction that his side got the better of the deal.

Q. What can we reasonably expect from Gary Sanchez in 2017?
A. Not that. Fangraphs projects .268/.329/.490 with 26 home runs and four wins against replacement. Pretty good for $540,000.

Q. It felt like Terry Francona out foxed Joe Maddon in the World Series. Why does everyone love Maddon?
A. For all the right reasons. He's smart and open to new ideas. His players love playing for him. He keeps it light over 162 games. He knows his players and never panics. That said, I agree that Tito did a great job of matching his limited assets -- most notably Cory Kluber and Andrew Miller -- against the Cubs' deep vein of talent. 

Q. I can't decide whether Hal Steinbrenner is a better owner than his father. George was a lunatic but his teams won.
A. That's not technically a question, frequently asked or otherwise. It's a different time now. George could bully the rest of baseball then in a way Hal can't today. New York enjoyed advantages -- not just financial-- that pre-dated the luxury tax, shared revenue and a social media landscape that makes anywhere the center of the media world depending on who's Tweeting. George's brand of insanity would be a colossal failure today.

Q. You made it pretty clear that you think Donald Trump is a sociopath. What policies of his are you rooting for?
A. My problem with Trump is not partisan;  who even knows where he stands on the issues? The problem is he's a despicable human being who remains willfully ignorant of the job he sought. Replacing the Affordable Care Act and enforcing some fiscal discipline would be welcome developments, though I have zero faith he will accomplish either.

Q. What is ahead for Bryce Harper? He was the world's best player in 2015 and then hit .243 last year.
A. Almost no one's career progresses in a straight line. Harper appeared to be dinged up last year, yet he managed a .373 OBP, 24 homers and three wins against replacement. His 2015 might have been a one-off, but Fangraphs projects a big bounce back for him, particularly in the power department.

Q. What do the Cubs do if Jason Heyward continues to suck?
A. The only thing that's certain is that they'll keep paying him through 2023.

Q. Where does Aroldis Chapman land and for how much?
A. Are we assuming he's chasing the cash? Word is he and the Yankees are courting.

Q. Am I crazy or is this Hot Stove season shaping up as the worst ever? The free agent crop is garbage.
A. The free agent crop is mostly garbage. As for your mental health, you should see a professional.

Q. Who is going to be the best free agent pickup this winter?
A. Ian Desmond? Versatile defenders with broad skill sets tend to have high floors, and speedsters tend to age well. Plus he's good looking and of uncertain ethnicity.

That's enough for now. Keep those cards and letters coming. And try to put the questions in question form.

The False Dichotomy of Being Buyers or Sellers

A newt

You may have noticed that the Pirates look like a sinking ship. Andrew McCutchen has been turned into a newt. Jeff Locke misses more lunar eclipses than bats. Francisco Liriano, Juan Nicasio and Jon Neise have left a mess on the mound and there's no one to help closer Mark Melancon clean it up. After a 6-20 stretch from May to late June, they're under .500 and so far behind the Cubs they're about to be lapped.

So, the thinking seems to go, management either believes they can win a Wild Card or they're going to sell off parts at the trade deadline.

Talk about a false dichotomy.

Trading away valuable veterans makes sense if your team won't contend until those veterans leave or lose their value. If Pittsburgh brass believes 2016 is a lost cause they might want to unload a player who turns free agent in November. But jettisoning assets from a team that won 98 times last season for future value is the work of a paranoid schizophrenic.

Total Rebuild as Default
We have become so accustomed to the total rebuild that we've lost sight of what a dramatic and desperate act it is. It's tantamount to giving up in hopes of bouncing back twice as strong a few years hence. Which is why it shouldn't be the default position for any franchise, much less one that seems to be in nothing more than a slump.

That's even assuming the Pirates are a lost cause. In fact, they're a fine offensive and defensive team, except for a rotation that's lighting up scoreboards and dragging the team to a 37-40 record. If you're going to suffer the extended scuffling of good players, it might as well be in the element of the game that is most inconsistent under the best of circumstances.

Small Improvement = Wild Card Contender
Indeed, if Bucco hurling improves from fourth worst to middle of the pack in their remaining 85 games, the Pirates could easily make up the 4.5-game gap between them and the Wild Card. With a pitching coach, Ray Searage, considered something of a mound whisperer, and a rotation of hurlers who have achieved success in the past, that is eminently possible. It might even be predictable.

If GM Neal Huntington believes third basemen David Freese and Jung-ho Kang are sufficiently redundant to swap one for a set-up man or a third starter, that's defensible. If he wants to hedge his bets on sacrificing the long-term for a Wild Card charge that might fall short, that's understandable. 

If he announces he's flipping the roster for draft picks and Single-A All Stars, I want to see a picture ID, because that's some irrational fan talking, not the savvy team builder who turned the franchise around from the two dark decades that preceded him. 

The Pirates have more choices than just buyers or sellers. If the pundits don't know it, I guarantee that the people who run the club do.

Where Are the All-Time Greats?

A recent spate of Hall of Fame retirements has transformed today's Major Leagues from a repository of the enshrined to a roster of stars whose exact composition is a mystery. Players who are Hall of Fame locks right now number three: Albert Pujols, Ichiro Suzuki and Miguel Cabrera.

Compare that to 10 years ago when Alex Rodriguez could have cruised into Cooperstown with hardly a dissenter. Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Derek Jeter, Sammy Sosa, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Mike Mussina, Kurt Schilling, Greg Madduz, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine were all dancing their waltzes into baseball history.

Purely on the merits, of course, ARod is a no doubter, just as Bonds and Clemens were. The forecast for any of them seeing their bust carved is partly dubious with a chance of impossible. Illicit performance boosting may also work against the borderline case of David Ortiz. Infielders Chase Utley and Adrian Beltre have to rate as probably nots, barring late career second acts (or third acts in Beltre's case.) Carlos Beltran's candidacy depends on how much voters have evolved to appreciate all-around skills, and then which way their coins toss.

Of course, there are some mid-career probablies out there. You have to like Buster Posey's chances, particularly if he can remain behind the plate. On top of his lifetime .300+ batting average, he owns a Rookie of the Year, an MVP and three World Championships. In his sixth season, at age 28, Posey is at it again, posting a .314 TAv.

Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Andrew McCutchen, Giancarlo Stanton, Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw and Craig Kimbrel are on promising trajectories as well, though Kimbrel has been lit up in 16 innings this year and Kershaw's powers seemed to have disappeared, Samson-style, with the loss of his hair, in his case facial. Those last three names illuminate how wanting the Majors are today in pitching greatness. The top active hurling careers belong to Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, Adam Wainright, Chris Carpenter and Joe Nathan, fine moundsmen all, but hardly bronze material.  Other than King Felix, there will not be a single legitimate pitching candidate for a decade or so after the current backlog clears out.

Then there is Yadier Molina, who needs to keep hitting in the sunset years of his career to be considered this generation's Ivan Rodriguez. Twenty-nine-year-old Evan Longoria has a shot if he returns to the form of his first five full seasons. Joey Votto would have to maintain that consistent excellence for another decade to earn Hall stripes.  And we can always dream on the second and third-year players like Puig, Cespedes, Harvey, Abreu and their ilk. But potential outnumbers fruition by a healthy margin.

Experience tells us that a couple of those named will slide off the list, just as Nomar Garciaparra, Tim Lincecum and Joe Mauer did. And others will climb on, following a path paved by Paul Molitor and Sandy Koufax, to name two. Still, it's likely that the ballot clogging now vexing Hall of Fame voting will not be an issue a decade or two from now.

The NL MVP: Stolen By A Pirate

Yadier Molina is the Adonis of backstops. He commands the defense, terrorizes baserunners, and frames pitches. He rakes like an outfielder -- .316 BA with 55 extra base hits.  And as a catcher, he's well-nigh irreplaceable. (His understudy hit .205 with an OPS 300 points lower.)

The green eye shades, however, don't consistently hold Molina's skill set in high regard. Some fielding metrics even ding him for his glove work. None of the valuation systems seem to credit him appropriately for his prowess at the bat despite squatting for 1300 innings a year. Consequently, you would not find Molina's name on the short list of MVP candidates in Seamhead Land. Baseball Prospectus credits Molina with 4.0 wins against replacement. Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference have him at 5.4 and 5.7 respectively.

This seems preposterous for a player who plays a role in literally every single pitch, and it leaves us all wondering how else to value him. Compare him, for example, to teammate Matt Carpenter, who covered second and third base while playing almost every Cardinal game and compiling a .325/.391/.486 line, with a league-leading 55 doubles. Carpenter's 41 point-advantage in OPS over 25 more games are certainly a yawning gap, particularly from a player staffing a low-offense position. Carpenter is credited with about one extra win compared to Molina.

When considering the MVP the one and only consideration should be how much value the player brought to his team. There is one statistic, variously called Wins Against Replacement (WAR) or Wins Against Replacement Player (WARP), that is designed to compile all the elements -- on-base ability, power-hitting, baserunning, defense -- multiplied by the level of competition and the offensive proclivities of the relevant ballparks, all while accounting for replacement level at the player's position. On that last item, a first baseman or right fielder is held to a higher hitting standard than a shortstop or catcher.

We could all take the day off if that one statistic picked the crop, bundled it and carried it off to market. But defensive statistics are still crawling and learning their ABCs; we have limited faith in them. So let's view the candidates through the statistical lens of offense, and season the results with defense.

Matt Carpenter, 2B/3B      .325/.391/.486,   .877 OPS   66.4 VORP   good defensive flexibility
Andrew McCutchen, CF    .317/.404/.508,  .912 OPS   65.0 VORP   highlight-reel defense
Shin-soo Choo, CF            .286/.424/.464   .888 OPS   63.1 VORP    a RF masquerading as a CF
Joey Votto, 1B                 .306/.436/.492,  .928 OPS   55.8 VORP    Gold Glove defense
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B       .302/.401/.553,  .954 OPS   53.0 VORP    superb defense
Jayson Werth, RF            .318/.398/.535   .933 OPS    44.8 VORP   average outfielder
Buster Posey, C                .294/.369/.451   .820 OPS   44.1 VORP    good D at key position
Yadier Molina, C               .319/.359/.477,  .836 OPS   40.6 VORP   elite D at key position
Freddie Freeman, 1B      .319/.396/.502   .898 OPS   39.3 VORP    good defense
Carlos Gomez, CF            .325/.391/.486   .877 OPS   38.7 VORP   superb D at key position


(There is WAR/WARP for pitchers, which filters out defense and examines the underlying performance of the thrower. It's a slow-moving revolution in which you should not invest short-term money.)

There are a lot of legitimate contenders here and reasonable people may pick different names for the top of their ballot. Goldschmidt owns the slugging, OPS, HR and RBI titles for 2013. Votto and Choo are 1-2 in OBP and should be expecting Valentine's chocolates from Brandon Phillips. Carpenter's ability to cover the corner gives manager Mike Matheny options. Posey and Molina have value that seems to elude the system.

But the best MVP catch is The Cutch, Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen. He hits, runs (27 of 37 steals) and flashes leather. He's the key cog in the Bucs' playoff push, turning it on (1.015 OPS) in the last two months. For his mix of skills McCutchen is also the NL leader in WAR, worth 8.2 wins against replacement, a full win better than anyone else.

Before departing, a shout out to three star performers who weren't on the field enough. Hanley Ramirez and David Wright have their bodies to blame; Yasiel Puig languished in Chattanooga for 40 games. Extrapolated to a full season, that trio would rank 1-2-3 respectively in the MVP race.
Ramirez, the Dodger shortstop, posted an OPS over 1000 and was worth five wins in just 86 games. And remember how the league would catch up to Puig? Well, it's catching its breath instead. He ended the season at .321/.392/.537 and 42 extra base hits in less than 2/3rds of a season. Wait until he learns the game...