The Pirates have agreed to sign Andrew McCutchen to a one-year deal for $5 million. The deal makes absolutely zero sense from an on-field baseball perspective, but it pretty clearly aligns with Bob Nutting’s ongoing plan to bamboozle the city of Pittsburgh into lining his pockets with cash. McCutchen is the best Pirate since (at least) Brian Giles and the face of the only winning Pirate team of the last 30 years, and this move is obviously designed to appeal to the sentimentality of a fanbase that regards Cutch as a hero if not a demigod. Honestly, if the signing made even a lick of sense from a baseball perspective, I would love it; I’m as big a fan of Cutch as the next yinzer. But there is zero on-field value to be found here, which makes it a cynical, calculated ploy designed to win hearts and sell tickets without investing the actual money necessary to field a competitive team or even improve the currently bad team a little bit.
Let’s start from a context-neutral, value-based point of view. The Pirates are paying Cutch $5 million. In a vaccuum, is he worth that? Well, ZiPS projects him for 0.7 WAR in 482 PA. Steamer says 0.7 in 541. THE BAT says 1.3 in 539, and THE BAT X says 1.7 in 539. I have my own opinion about how to weigh these systems (ZiPS is the gold standard), but for objectivity’s sake let’s weight them 2/2/1/1 (so that the two versions of THE BAT combine for a share equal to each of the other two systems). That amounts to an average projection of about 1 WAR in 521 PA. That would mean the Pirates are paying $5M/WAR. Not bad, right? Except hold on, because is a player who puts up 1 WAR in 521 PA a player who should be getting 521 PA? Probably not. That sounds like a guy more suited for a bench role. So if Cutch is slated for more like 250 PA as a platoon/bench bat, that’s more like 0.5 WAR. Which means the team is paying $10M/WAR. Not so good. Glass half-full, you could say that Cutch as a starter is a decent value. Glass half-empty and you’d have to admit both that giving a full-time gig to a guy this bad would be a pretty dumb idea and that he’s being overpaid for the part-time role he’s really suited for.
But maybe you’ll argue that the Pirates are so bad that a full-time, 1-WAR player actually improves the team. Fair enough! After all, in 2022 Pirate right fielders combined for exactly replacement-level production in 1351 PA (this counts the total production of all players who played RF at any point, not just the production of players while actually playing the position), so a full win in less than half the time would be a serious improvement. Except we shouldn’t count on what happened last year repeating itself in 2023. Instead, we should look at what’s projected to happen next year. Prior to this signing, Cal Mitchell was the presumptive everyday RF. Using the same combination of projection systems, Mitchell projects for 0.65 WAR in 413 PA, which would be about 0.8 WAR if you gave him the same 521 PA as Cutch. So Cutch is a projected 0.2-WAR improvement over the incumbent. While that barely moves the needle, an improvement is an improvement, so it’s nothing to sneeze at.
Except that Mitchell isn’t the only option. Other outfielders on the 40-man roster with at least a little bit of MLB experience include Jack Suwinski, Travis Swaggerty, Connor Joe, Canaan Smith-Njigba, and Ji-Hwan Bae. Including Cutch and Mitchell, here are their WAR projections for 2023 per 521 PA:
McCutchen 1.0
Mitchell 0.8
Suwinski 1.3
Swaggerty 0.8
Joe 1.4*
Smith-Njigba 0.9
Bae 1.8
For those keeping count, that’s a whopping six non-Cutch players already on the 40-man roster who project to be about as good as McCutchen does. And this doesn’t include Bryan Reynolds, an all-star-caliber player who also happens to play outfield. So McCutchen’s 1 WAR doesn’t really improve the team at all; it just takes the place of (read: blocks) a number of younger players who are all about as good. Mitchell and Suwinski were the presumptive starters because they performed best in 2022,* which is as it should be, but there is no shortage of upper level outfielders ready to step in should either of them falter. In addition to the ones already mentioned, the Pirates also have Miguel Andujar, Jared Triolo, Ryan Vilade, and Tucupita Marcano as outfield-capable players on the 40-man, as well as Matt Gorski, who isn’t on the 40-man but should be in AAA to start the year and available to fill in. McCutchen not only blocks the equally good, younger players who should get a shot, but he doesn’t even really improve the depth. He’s totally redundant.
Moreover, it’s not just that a handful of these young players project to be about as good as Cutch; it’s that the only real shot the Pirates have of even sniffing something like contention this year is for their younger players to break out. This is not a good team, but maybe if some of their young guys break out, they might not be totally horrible. A breakout season from a young player is far more likely than a miraculous bounceback from a 36-year-old; that’s just the reality of the aging curve. It’s one thing to sign veterans like Carlos Santana, Austin Hedges, and Rich Hill at positions where there are no MLB-ready prospects waiting, but there are a ton of MLB-ready outfielders in this organization. Signing a vet to block them not only fails to improve the MLB team or the depth, it actively decreases the potential for needle-moving breakout performances.
But maybe you’ll say that McCutchen, as a right-handed hitter, has specific tactical platoon utility that the Pirates were lacking. After all, Suwinski, Mitchell, Swaggerty, Smith-Njigba, and Bae are all lefties. I’m really grasping at straws here to try to make this move seem reasonable, but I don’t think this argument has any legs. Right-handed-hitting outfielders on the 40-man are Joe, Andujar, Triolo, and Vilade, and then Gorski is a righty as well. Reynolds is a switch-hitter. So the projected MLB outfield group before Cutch came aboard included two righties (Joe, Andujar), three lefties (Suwinski, Mitchell, Bae), and one switch. That’s pretty balanced. It’s true that Vilade, Gorski, and Triolo aren’t really MLB-ready, so there wasn’t much in the way of RHH OF behind Joe and Andujar, but still the value of adding another right-handed hitter to the two already available seems marginal at best.
Because of the universal DH and expanding bullpens, the bench isn’t big enough to support three platoons. There are four bench spots available, and two need to be taken by a backup catcher and a utility outfielder. That leaves only two spots left for platoons, and those spots were already slated to go to righties Joe and Andujar. So to recap: Cutch as a starter is blocking prospects, and Cutch as a platoon-partner is redundant.
But maybe, as a last-ditch effort to make sense of this without admitting that it is a cynical ploy to sell more tickets by exploiting this city’s sentimental attachment to Andrew McCutchen, you’ll argue that Cutch, as a direct replacement for Miguel Andujar specifically, is an upgrade. It’s here where I’ll admit that this move comes closest to making sense. First, the caveat: we don’t know yet who will be DFA’d to make room for Cutch on the 40-man. We may find out in a couple days that they are keeping Andujar and therefore do not see Cutch specifically as a replacement for him. And in fact Kody Duncan, who is a blogger at Rumbunter, recently tweeted that Cutch took this deal over similar and better offers elsewhere in part because the Pirates guaranteed him more playing time, which, if true, suggests that the Pirates see him as more like a starter than the part-time player Andujar was slated to be. So we don’t, at this point, have any real reason to believe that Cutch is just replacing Andujar.
That said, yes, McCutchen does project better than Andujar. While Cutch projects for 1 WAR in 521 PA, Andujar projects for only 0.4 WAR in the same playing time. In a part-time role as a platoon DH and fifth outfielder, getting maybe 200-250 PA, Cutch is maybe 0.2-0.3 wins better. As with the Mitchell comparison, that really doesn’t move the needle, but an improvement is an improvement, which shouldn’t be dismissed. In addition, Andujar weirdly has reverse platoon splits in his career. Reverse splits as a matter of true talent do not exist, but nonetheless Andujar does not have the type of splits that would make him a particular asset as a platoon partner. McCutchen, on the other hand, has always crushed lefties. So not only is Cutch better, but he’s also better-suited for this specific role. Moreover, given that the other RHH options aren’t MLB-ready right now, Cutch wouldn’t really be blocking any prospects if he is just a platoon DH and occasional fill-in in the outfield. And though Andujar is significantly younger, he already has four years of service time, so he doesn’t offer a ton of long-term value beyond what he would provide this year.*
But there is a complicating factor here, which is that McCutchen is limited to OF/DH, while Andujar has primarily been a 3b. He’s been an absolutely dreadful 3b, but still he does have some utility as a backup option there. So while Cutch is a better fit for the platoon DH role, he doesn’t really fill Andujar’s specific role as a platoon bat who can occasionally spell Hayes at 3b while also providing some emergency insurance in the IF. I’m not sure exactly how much value that bit of IF utility has, but it is a relevant detail.
All of which leaves us, I think, at a point where, maybe, if we squint hard enough, the McCutchen signing, while a significant overpay, does make at least a little bit of baseball sense if Cutch is a direct replacement for Miguel Andujar in the limited role of platoon DH and nothing more.
We’ll have to see, when a corresponding move is announced, whether Andujar is the one who’s DFA’d. And then at the end of spring training, we’ll have to see whether Suwinski and Mitchell and Joe retain their spots on the MLB roster. And then as the season progresses, we’ll have to see whether Cutch is utilized as a platoon bat. And maybe all of those things will happen, and I’ll be able to look back on this and say that all in all, this move wasn’t totally fucking stupid. But “not totally fucking stupid” is the best-case scenario here.
The likely situation is that they really did just sign a largely-redundant, aging, mediocre veteran to block the many upper-level prospects who play his position. The fact that that mediocre veteran happens to be the most beloved Pirate since Willie Stargell helps no one but the sentimental yinzers who’d rather have a wistful dalliance with the good old days than a competitive MLB team in the here-and-now. And Bob Nutting, of course. It also helps Bob Nutting. For a fraction of the cost of what it would take to build an actual competitive team, he is instead appealing to nostalgia for previous competitive teams. Sentimental Pirate fans buy that sweet nostalgia in the form of tickets to see Cutch in black and gold again, and Nutting laughs all the way to the bank.
*Because Joe was acquired after the Pirates’ ZiPS were released but before the Rockies’ were, the ZiPS projection for him is not available. The number here is an average of Steamer and THE BAT.
*both minors and MLB performance taken into account
*The potential long-term value of Andujar is mostly in the potential that he can return to his 2018, rookie-of-the-year form and serve as a valuable trade chip, which, while unlikely, is a value that McCutchen doesn’t have, because no matter how well he performs or how poorly the team does, they will never even consider trading him, because he isn’t here to provide value as a trade chip or even a baseball player, but as a figurehead, totem, and financial catalyst.
EDIT:
Shortly after publishing this, I saw the report from Jason Mackey on how this deal went down. I don’t have a P-G subscription, so I am relying on the summary at MLBTR.com, and therefore may be talking out of my ass, but it seems that this whole thing happened about the way you’d expect such a cynical, financially-motivated deal to happen. Namely, no deal between the Pirates and McCutchen was even a possibility as recently as January 1. But then McCutchen sent a text directly to owner Bob Nutting, Nutting “approached” GM Ben Cherington, and Cherington met with Cutch directly. Less than two weeks later, they have a deal. Again, I am writing this without reading the full article, but it certainly sounds like baseball ops was not interested in signing McCutchen (likely for all of the reasons detailed in my post), but McCutchen appealed directly to ownership, and ownership meddled in baseball ops, motivating (I’ll stop short of saying “directing” or “demanding”) Cherington to get a deal done.
On the one hand, this makes me feel better about baseball ops. It’s such an obviously pointless/stupid baseball move that it would reflect poorly on the decision-making of baseball ops, if it were in fact their decision. But since it looks like it wasn’t really their decision, they’re off the hook.
But on the other hand and more importantly, it makes me feel a whole lot worse about ownership. Given that ownership is numbers 1-1000 on the list of things preventing this organization from being competitive, any further evidence of ownership fucking things up is about the worst news we can get. Nutting being cheap and cynical and exploitative is bad enough, but him actually meddling in baseball ops decisions is the pinnacle of horrible ownership. The brave men and women of the front office are all that stand between Nutting and total control over the on-field product of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and that black-and-yellow line is thin indeed.
This is not the first reported instance of Nutting meddling in baseball ops, of course. Last year’s arbitration kerfuffle with Bryan Reynolds involved ownership meddling. If you’ll recall, the Pirates, as a file-and-trial team, were set to go to arbitration with Reynolds. The Pittsburgh media jumped all over the perfectly normal circumstance of a team going to trial over a $650k difference in proposed salary, the fanbase in general jumped in to complain about it too, and in what appeared to be a misguided effort toward goodwill, Nutting commanded the FO to get a deal done and avoid a hearing. Because the FO has at least a shred of integrity, they negotiated a two-year deal (typically, file-and-trial teams are willing to negotiate on multi-year deals but not one-year deals after exchanging numbers) for Reynolds. The deal was for two years and $13.5M, which seems to me like an overpay, but there aren’t really any good recent arbitration comps for Reynolds, so I can’t say with any certainty that they definitely overpaid. Regardless, the reported fact is that Nutting interfered in baseball ops to get the Reynolds deal done.
Less verifiably reported but widely rumored, so take it with a grain of salt, was Nutting’s role in the disastrous Chris Archer trade in 2018. Rumor has it that this was also Nutting-directed, insofar as Nutting demanded that the FO deal for an established player at that year’s deadline. Exactly how much responsibility the former FO bore for making that specific deal would be open to interpretation, even if Nutting’s rumored involvement was true, but I do believe the rumors in this case, because that deal, trading multiple top prospects for a veteran, was so antithetical to Neal Huntington’s entire established track record that it kind of defies explanation unless Nutting was a factor.
In any case, we now have solidly-reported evidence that Nutting is a meddler in FO affairs. In the case of Reynolds’ contract and Cutch’s signing, the result isn’t disastrous, even if, as I’ve tried to explain here, the Cutch signing is pretty stupid. But the Archer trade provides a stark example of exactly how disastrous FO meddling can be. Moreover, while Nutting’s meddling in the Reynolds situation seemed like misguided goodwill, the McCutchen situation seems, as I’ve said at least a dozen times now, like an attempt to exploit the fan base’s sentimentality. You could argue that Nutting did it benevolently, to give the fans what they want, but the fans also want a reasonable payroll that will allow the team to compete, and Nutting refuses to give us that, so it’s hard to read the McCutchen move as anything other than a cynical attempt to drive interest in a product that he refuses to substantively improve.
I don’t typically get too upset by individual moves, and it sucks that I have to be so upset about one that brings one of my favorite players back to Pittsburgh. But this one is really egregious. It doesn’t improve the on-field product, it blocks prospects who might have a role in future winning Pirate teams, and it’s an example of ownership directing baseball ops decisions, which is about the worst thing an owner can do and more or less a death knell for a sports franchise.
The McCutchen Era 