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Welcome Back, Andrew McCutchen

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For most of the 2016 season, the Pirates have seen their best player slumping. Andrew McCutchen has been one of the best players in baseball in recent years. Out of 290 qualified players from 2012-15, he has been the best position player in the NL in WAR (second to Clayton Kershaw by 1.2 WAR), and has been second overall in the majors, behind Mike Trout. And yet, the version we’ve seen for most of the 2016 season has been a far cry from the best position player in the National League.

McCutchen combined for a .313/.404/.523 line in those seasons, showing great plate patience with a 17.9% strikeout rate and a 12.3% walk rate. The 2016 season was his age 29 season, which means he shouldn’t have been expected to see a drop off. And yet he did drop off in a huge way, falling from all of those numbers, with the most alarming results being the loss of his strike zone.

This was all overlooked, and wasn’t a problem early in the season. The Pirates had the best offense in baseball in April. They were still around the top ten in May. But they completely fell apart in June, ranking dead last, and they only managed to climb up to just within the top 20 for the month of July. It was easier to ignore McCutchen’s slump early in the season when the entire offense was picking him up, but when everyone else started to slump, the Pirates needed their MVP to return.

McCutchen didn’t return to his normal ways in June and July. The Pirates ended up benching him for three games, along with an off-day, giving him a break in early August. Since that point, the Andrew McCutchen that we all recognize has returned, as shown in the graphic below.

mccutchen2016slump

As you can see, McCutchen’s strikeouts were at an all-time high and his walks were an all-time low. His swinging strike rate was up, which explains the higher strikeout and the lower walk rate. And as a result, his OPS was way down, almost 200 points lower than a normal range for him.

There’s no known reason for the early season slump. McCutchen dealt with a thumb injury early in the season, and that could be the problem, slowing down his swing on inside pitches he usually hits, and then putting him behind in the count where he has to expand his zone to cover places he’s less effective. In fact, if you look at his averages below, you can see that he was very ineffective pretty much everywhere the first four months, but is now crushing the inner half of the plate (and pretty much everywhere in the middle of the zone).

mccutchenavgaprjul2016

mccutchenavgaugsep2016

Just for comparison’s sake, here is the profile from 2012-2015:

mccutchenavg20122015

As you can see, there are a lot of similarities between the August/September image and the 2012-15 image. The biggest one is that he’s back to hitting inside pitches, which was a problem for him earlier in the season, and something so bad that you didn’t even need the numbers above to confirm it.

It may not just have been his thumb though. It could also be that things just snowballed on him, getting him into a funk where he just couldn’t recover. I should note that McCutchen struggled for a bit early in 2015, at which point he had a knee injury that he downplayed. He later admitted, heading into the 2016 season, that the knee was more of an issue than he originally stated. I have a feeling we will eventually get the answer as to what was wrong with McCutchen this year, especially the further he gets removed from the slump.

It looks right now like he is removed from that slump, and the numbers are back to normal. His OPS the last two months is right there where it was in 2015. His walk rate is up and his strikeout rate is way down. His swinging strike rate is back to a low point. And those numbers keep improving. During the month of September, he has a 12.6% strikeout rate and a .982 OPS. The old Andrew McCutchen appears to be back.

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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