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Few players in baseball have been more consistently MVP-worthy over the past handful of seasons than Andrew McCutchen. Yet more than a month into 2015, the Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder, who has three straight top-three NL MVP finishes—including the 2013 trophy—has looked nothing like his usual MVP-caliber self.

In fact, entering play Tuesday, the 28-year-old is hitting just .219/.308/.342 with but two home runs and one stolen base through 31 games.

This, from a stud who has averaged—that’s averaged—a slash line of .320/.405/.534 with more than 25 homers, nearly 90 RBI and almost 22 steals per from 2012 to 2014.

Short of copping out by calling this something of a Samson situation after Cutch cut his dreads for charity this past offseason, let’s delve into what’s been going wrong here—and whether the Pirates superstar can turn things around.

To McCutchen’s credit—and perhaps a little to the concern of folks in Pittsburgh—he understandably is fed up with his mediocre performance so far.

“I’m sick and tired of going 0-for-freaking-4,” he told Travis Sawchik of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in early May. “I know I’m better than that. … It’s under mediocre right now. It’s bad.”

That’s refreshing to hear from a player, let alone one of McCutchen’s ilk. But it also sounds like a man searching for answers rather than one who knows how to find them, which is more discouraging than refreshing.

It’s not as if he is lacking for confidence, though. “I feel good. I feel strong when I’m up there. I feel fine when I’m hitting,” McCutchen said to Sawchik. “I can’t sit here and say my knee is the reason. I don’t believe so. I just believe I’m a little off. … Once it’s going, it ain’t gonna stop. While I’m down, get me while I’m down.”

In reading that second quote, you no doubt came across McCutchen’s passing reference to his knee. This, one figures, is related to the somewhat vague “lower body soreness” he was battling through during spring training, as Stephen J. Nesbitt of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported back in mid-March.

The injury kept McCutchen out of a number of games during the exhibition season and had to have impacted his preparation for the real games, which likely is part of why he hasn’t been his consistently uber-productive self.

The problem also hasn’t completely gone away, as McCutchen took himself out of a game during the opening week and questions about the knee have lingered into May, much like the apparent ailment itself.

In diagnosing McCutchen’s performance, a good place to start is with his plate discipline. His 9.8 percent walk percentage and 15.8 percent strikeout percentage both are within range of not only his career marks, but also those of the past few seasons.

As far as his contact rates, all of those seem to be more or less right in line with years past. His overall contact percentage of 78.8 percent isn’t far off his career rate (80.4 percent); and the same goes for his 9.3 percent swinging strike rate (8.2 percent career).

McCutchen’s batting average on balls in play, however, sticks out like crazy. Entering play Tuesday, he owns a .245 BABIP, which is remarkably lower than his .332 career number—and more than 100 points south of his lowest BABIP in any of the past three seasons (.353 in 2013).

The quick takeaway from that, of course, is that McCutchen has been superbly unlucky and merely needs to exorcise the demons, like so:

But let’s go a little deeper than that, shall we? This is, after all, one of the very elite players in baseball, and this slump has gone on for more than a month now.

The next portion of data to look into is McCutchen’s batted ball breakdown. He’s exchanged a few percentage points of line drives for ground balls, but it’s nothing that looks out of whack. Then again, grounders tend to find holes, which is why McCutchen’s drastic downturn in BABIP is even more puzzling.

The league-wide BABIP on grounders in 2015 is .237, and it normally settles in around the .230-.250 range. By comparison, McCutchen’s BABIP on grounders in his career is .311, but in 2015 it’s just .268.

In other words, it’s strange that McCutchen has been hitting the ball on the ground more often, yet it’s still producing a lower than usual BABIP for him. To an extent, that should start to even out.

The one counterpoint, however, is that McCutchen is hitting a much higher percentage of soft worm-burners (26.8 percent) compared to hard grounders (17.1) than he has in the past. To wit, the percentage of hard ground balls he has hit the past three years going backward were 28.0, 31.8 and 22.6.

At the same time, he’s pulling fewer balls (38.9 percent versus 43.2 percent career) while also trading hard contact (32.6 percent versus 36.9 percent career) for more soft contact (15.8 percent versus 13.5 percent career), enough that it’s noticeable, at least to this point in 2015. And if the focus is on the past few seasons only, the difference is even more stark.

Lastly, McCutchen’s 5.3 home run-to-fly-ball ratio is well below his 12.3 career figure, which speaks to both his misfortune as well as his inability to drive the ball with full force early on.

The bottom line? McCutchen’s approach remains the same, which is good. The contact rates do, too. Also good. But the type of contact, namely the amount of authority behind it, is different—and not in a good way.

As Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs concludes after examining the data and the footage for Fox Sports’ Just a Bit Outside:

The matter with Andrew McCutchen is his swing. Maybe he’s still in pain, and maybe he’s not still in enough pain for it to matter. But regardless, he has a swing that’s seemingly compensating for an uncomfortable left leg. And that’s not the swing of a successful Andrew McCutchen.

The bad news is McCutchen doesn’t appear to be quite as healthy as he’s letting on, which is typical of a world-class athlete with top-of-the-scale confidence in his abilities. The good news? Once McCutchen gets back to normal—assuming his knee can recover and get right in short order—then so, too, should his performance.

Even MVP-caliber players have slumps and slow starts. Now we have some idea why McCutchen is fighting through one for the first time since, well, he’s become an MVP.

Statistics are accurate through Monday, May 11, and courtesy of MLB.com, MiLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.

To talk baseball or fantasy baseball, check in with me on Twitter: @JayCat11.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

A new week, another batch of waiver-wire additions just the way you like ’em: hot and fresh out of the oven.

Some players mentioned last week—including Rusney Castillo, Trevor Plouffe, Alex Colome and Blake Swihart—are already owned in many leagues, but they remain quality pickups if they’re available.

In the interest of keeping the names new, though, let’s avoid any repeats. Here are the top 10 waiver-wire pickups for Week 6.

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Each week of baseball’s regular season brings any number of fascinating news, noteworthy developments and/or curious behavior.

The week that is about to conclude, Week 5, has been no different—and there’s still part of the weekend left for something else to happen.

In the meantime, here are a handful of the biggest takeaways from the goings-on of the past seven days.

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Because the baseball season is so long, it’s often unwise to put too much stock in early-season performances before teams and players have a chance to find themselves. This is particularly true for prospects, who can be even more volatile while needing even more time to figure things out.

The other angle, however, is that these young players have provided less to go on in their still-nascent careers—they are prospects for a reason—making any noticeable change in production that much more stark.

On the pages to follow, there are 10 prospects whose early 2015 performances stand out—for better or for worse—and could indicate a new path.

Keep in mind that these players are still eligible as prospects—meaning, they have not exceeded 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the majors—and also are currently in the minors. That rules out, say, Preston Tucker, the Houston Astros outfielder who was leading the minors in home runs and RBI at the time of his call-up this week to help cover while George Springer is out.

Here’s another key, not-to-be-glossed-over aspect to all of this: In finding prospects who are taking big steps forward so far, the choices were limited only to those who either struggled or were hurt last year; conversely, in picking youngsters who are taking big steps backward to date, the criteria considers only those highly regarded players who were good and healthy in 2014.

In other words, there’s no Carlos Correa or Corey Seager here. Both are off to fantastic starts that could be called steps forward, but they already were great in the first place. Same goes for others such as, say, Alex Reyes, Steven Matz and Raimel Tapia, who were good in 2014 and look even better in 2015; or Robert Stephenson, Lucas Sims and Chris Stratton, who were shaky last year and haven’t done much about it yet this season.

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What good is a fantasy owner who lacks a sense of timing?

Fantasy baseball—just like the real thing—is a game of skill, luck and timing. That last trait in particular comes in handy in regard to getting value in the trading game.

Knowing which player(s) to trade away and which to deal for—and knowing just the right time to do so—can make all the difference.

After all, it doesn’t get much better than making a move to unload a hot flavor-of-the-week type who’s about to cool off in exchange for a slumping stud who’s ready to take off.

Now, speaking of timing, let’s get to some players to sell high and buy low.

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The Carlos Correa countdown is on. The Houston Astros—check that, the AL West-leading Houston Astros, who sport the best record in the American League at 18-8 entering play Tuesday—suddenly find themselves in a position where promoting their young shortstop and No. 1 prospect to the majors might come sooner than expected and would make plenty of sense for a few reasons.

First, there’s the recent injury to Jed Lowrie, the club’s starting shortstop who will be out until after the All-Star break with a torn ligament in his right thumb, according to Evan Drellich of the Houston Chronicle.

Lowrie was playing very well in his return to the Astros, hitting .300/.432/.567 in 18 games. His loss means Houston has been forced to try to hold down the fort at short by turning to the likes of Jonathan Villar and Marwin Gonzalez, neither of whom is worthy of starting at the position for a team that actually is looking to return to relevance, if not contention in 2015.

Speaking of which, reason No. 2 has to do with just that. The Astros, of course, have been undergoing a necessary and extremely lengthy rebuilding process in recent years. They are coming off six straight losing seasons, tying them with the New York Mets for the longest active stretch of nonwinning campaigns in baseball.

During that time, questions, concerns and criticisms have come to the forefront over the approach and when—or even if—Houston finally would turn it around. A lot can happen over the course of a six-month baseball season, but if the first portion of 2015 is any indication, that turnaround is underway.

Yes, the Astros are winning for a change, off to a hot start that has them with—get this—the largest division lead in baseball at the moment. Houston is already a whopping seven games ahead of the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners (11-15) in an AL West where the other four clubs have to try to claw their way back to .500 before they can set their sights on the ‘Stros.

And the third reason why the Correa countdown is ticking? Well, Correa himself.

One of the elite prospects in the game, Correa was the No. 1 overall pick in 2012 and was ranked among the top five—in fact, the top four—by each of Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, ESPN and MLB.com at the outset of spring training.

The 20-year-old keeps killing the ball at Double-A Corpus Christi. Through 23 games, he’s hitting .383/.458/.702 with 21 runs, 13 doubles, five home runs, 25 RBI and 11 stolen bases, while striking out only 18.7 percent of the time and walking 11.2 percent.

Here’s where we pause and suggest you reread those numbers, because: Wow. To put them in context, Correa is leading the Texas League in—deep breath—batting average, slugging percentage, on-base-plus slugging percentage, runs scored, hits and doubles.

As for on-base percentage, homers, RBI and stolen bases, he’s merely in the top four. Oh, and he has made but one error while playing all but one game at short, with the other coming as designated hitter.

All that, and Correa is the third-youngest player in the circuit, as only lefty Julio Urias of the Los Angeles Dodgers and outfielder Nomar Mazara of the Texas Rangers were born after him.

“Carlos is going to be a star player in the big leagues,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said when the Astros sent Correa down to the minor league camp during spring training. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Luhnow wrapped up that media session with the following statement: “We feel good about the squad that we’re going to take to Houston to start the season with. And we feel good about the protection and the players we’ll have available to us [in the minors], should an injury occur or a need arise.”

Well, a need has arisen, and Correa has performed as well as any player possibly could through the first turn of the season. But that doesn’t mean the Astros are ready to push the envelope by pushing their stud youngster all the way to the majors—at least not quite yet—even if he’s looking more and more ready by the day.

“He’s definitely a special player, so his time will come faster than it would for other guys,” Luhnow told Drellich in the aftermath of Lowrie‘s injury. “But…he’s got 70 at-bats above Class A, and we feel like he needs some more.”

Which raises the question: Had Correa not lost half of 2014 when he fractured his right fibula sliding into third base last June, would he be in Houston instead of Corpus Christi right now?

While the Astros, like most clubs, prefer their most valuable prospects go through all levels of the minors, including Triple-A, other phenoms like Clayton Kershaw, Giancarlo Stanton and Manny Machado have been bumped from Double-A straight to MLB at age 20 in recent years and found success, if not immediately then fairly soon thereafter. Correa is very much in the same class as those three were at the time of their promotions.

Another young player who made that jump?

“[Jose] Altuve never had Triple-A time, and he did OK,” Luhnow said, per Drellich. “[But] those at-bats that Correa is taking at Double-A, he’s not wasting his time there. He’s learning stuff, we’re evaluating, and it’s all helping toward the ultimate goal of getting him to the big leagues and having him help the team.”

Often with prospects, patience is prudent, if not imperative. But the forces seem to be aligning just so between Lowrie‘s injury and the way the Astros and Correa are playing so far.

The countdown is on.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Begin Slideshow

What good is a fantasy owner who lacks a sense of timing?

Fantasy baseball—just like the real thing—is a game of skill, luck and timing. That last trait in particular comes in handy in regard to getting value in the trading game.

Knowing which player(s) to trade away and which to deal for—and knowing just the right time to do so—can make all the difference.

After all, it doesn’t get much better than making a move to unload a hot flavor-of-the-week type who’s about to cool off in exchange for a slumping stud who’s ready to take off.

Now, speaking of timing, let’s get to some players to sell high and buy low.

Begin Slideshow

With a bat in his hands these days, Pablo Sandoval is either an All-Star-caliber hitter or barely better than a pitcher standing in the batter’s box. The difference depends on which side of the plate he’s swinging from.

Sandoval, of course, is a switch-hitter. Part of the 28-year-old third baseman’s appeal as a free agent this winter—and perhaps part of why he scored a five-year, $95 million contract with the Boston Red Sox—is because he can swing both right-handed and left-handed.

Problem is, he’s really only any good from the latter side.

As a lefty, Sandoval sports a .397/.485/.569 triple-slash line in 68 plate appearances in his first year as a Red Sox.

As a righty? Sure, it’s a miniature sample size, but in his 20 trips so far in 2015, Sandoval has gotten on base exactly twice: one hit, one walk. That hit? A low liner through the 5.5 hole off Toronto Blue Jays reliever Aaron Loup on April 28, meaning it took nearly a full month of the season for Sandoval to manage his first knock swinging righty.

Doing the easy math, Sandoval has made an out 18 times, with six coming via strikeout. Add it all up, and here’s the triple-slash line: .053/.100/.053.

Again, that could be chalked up to merely 20 times at bat, except this has been a trending problem for Sandoval in recent years. Take a look:

As you can see, Sandoval hasn’t always been bad against left-handed pitching. In fact, he has been quite good at times, including 2009, 2012 and even as recently as 2013. He has, however, showed much less pop as a righty, and his career splits now look like so:

• As a lefty hitter: .306/.360/.495
• As a righty hitter: .266/.314/.385

Sandoval spent the first seven seasons of his career at the San Francisco Giants‘ pitcher-friendly AT&T Park. The thought—or at least, the hope—was that getting his bat in hitter-friendly Fenway Park would help restore him to being a capable hitter from the right side, especially with the Green Monster as an easy target in left field.

This idea, however, doesn’t necessarily hold much merit. Take a look at the lefty-righty splits by all batters at AT&T since 2012:

And here are the same stats over the same time frame for Fenway Park:

On the whole, although it’s a nearly negligible disparity, righty hitters actually fared better than lefties at AT&T the past three seasons (and that’s with Sandoval hitting successfully as a lefty). Meanwhile, lefty swingers have had better marks than righties at Fenway.

In other words, the exact opposite of the thesis, which doesn’t exactly bode well for Sandoval’s chances.

To that point, as much as he’s still stinking from the right side in 2015, it’s way, way too early to tell much of anything, particularly from his Fenway splits so far. He has but four plate appearances at home versus left-handers so far, and he does have that one hit off Loup under those specific circumstances.

Overall, Sandoval is loving Fenway early on, as he owns a .385/.484/.615 line, but it’s only 31 plate appearances over eight home games to date. More data is needed to evaluate Sandoval both at Fenway and at Fenway as a righty hitter.

It’s clearly something to keep tabs on, however, given his massive ongoing struggles from that side in general. After all, it’s not as if a new home park is going to magically transform him into a good—or even average—hitter from the right side when his recent performance indicates the downward trend is only continuing.

As Scott Lauber writes for the Boston Herald:

Manager John Farrell characterized Sandoval as “a little overaggressive” from his weaker side and described his right-handed swing as “a work in progress.”

“Granted, he’s an aggressive hitter in general,” Farrell said, “but against a left-hander, you can see the body movement a little bit more forward toward the pitcher when compared to a right-hander. So, he’s probably trying to go out and get some pitches rather than letting the ball travel deeper in the zone.”

How much will the Red Sox’s opponents, especially their AL East rivals, try to take advantage of this in his first year in the American League? If the problem persists to these measures as 2015 progresses, it might be worth it for the Sox to suggest Sandoval simply stop swinging right-handed altogether.

No team would want to do that with a player who just signed a nearly nine-figure deal this past offseason. But if Sandoval is going to continue to hit like a pitcher from the right side against southpaws, he really can’t do that much worse from the left side of the batter’s box.

Statistics are accurate through Thursday, April 30, and courtesy of MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs, unless otherwise noted.

To talk baseball or fantasy baseball, check in with me on Twitter:@JayCat11.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It’s a good thing the Los Angeles Dodgers have arguably the best one-two pitching punch in Major League Baseball with Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke atop their staff. They’re going to need it.

In the wake of the lingering-since-spring-training left-shoulder injury to southpaw Hyun-Jin Ryu, expected to be the club’s third starter, and the more recent, more severe season-ending elbow tear suffered Saturday night by No. 4 starter Brandon McCarthy, the contending Dodgers are going to have to address their rapidly eroding rotation.

And probably sooner than later, as Bill Plunkett of the Los Angeles Times puts it:

McCarthy, who signed a lucrative contract with L.A. as a free agent this past offseason, left his outing over the weekend in the sixth inning of a game the Dodgers eventually won over the San Diego Padres.

Immediately after throwing a pitch that Justin Upton hit for a home run, the tall righty began to shake his right arm and then called the club’s coaching staff and trainers out to the mound. After a brief discussion, McCarthy came out.

“I expected [McCarthy] to go on the DL [Monday], but we thought more along the lines of tendinitis than something like [a torn ulnar collateral ligament],” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said Monday in his interview with reporters. “I felt like that’s what I was going to hear, then we would have to fill [in for McCarthy] for a little bit of time and get back to it. But obviously, the news was not good.”

The expectation is that McCarthy will need to undergo Tommy John surgery, per Earl Bloom of MLB.com, which could keep him out through the first half of 2016.

Meanwhile, the NL West-leading Dodgers (12-7) are merely very early in the first half of 2015, and already a team that has won the division each of the past two years and has World Series hopes needs to be searching for pitching depth either internally or possibly via trade between now and July 31.

Oh, and the Dodgers also have to keep their fingers crossed that Kershaw and Greinke can sustain the status quo as two of the sport’s very best and most durable.

After those two, the only other pitcher projected to be a part of the rotation at the outset of the season is Brett Anderson, who might well be the most injury-prone starting pitcher in baseball in recent years.

Over the previous three seasons, the 27-year-old left-hander has made just 19 starts and thrown all of 123 innings—combined. Anderson more or less is a disabled-list stint waiting to happen, but now the Dodgers need him to be a somewhat stable third option behind the top two.

That is, at least until Ryu returns. The 28-year-old Korean lefty, who was both good and steady in his first two seasons, is making progress but very slowly as he comes back from a shoulder impingement. Ryu threw 20 pitches off a mound Sunday in his first action since being shut down in mid-March, according to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com.

As for McCarthy, it’s not like he has been the pillar of health, which is why it was surprising to many when the Dodgers inked him not only for $48 million but also for four years this winter.

The 31-year-old has pitched in parts of 10 seasons in the majors, and only last year did McCarthy finally make it past 25 starts and over 175 innings in a single one. He has been on the DL a Ferris Bueller-like nine times.

Still, the Dodgers, in all likelihood, could have been anticipating some sort of ailment or injury for McCarthy—just not one of the season-ending variety. And certainly not after just four starts.

That leaves Mattingly and, especially, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman to scramble to find a way to make up for about, oh, 28 turns and 180 or so innings. And that’s just for McCarthy.

A peek at L.A.’s 40-man roster shows the following names as potential fill-ins, at least in the short term:

• Scott Baker, a 33-year-old veteran who sports a 4.24 career ERA and who last made even 10 starts in 2011
• Mike Bolsinger, who already has made one start for the Dodgers in 2015 but otherwise is 27 years old and in his third season at Triple-A
• Zach Lee, 23, the club’s first-round pick in 2010 who is off to a strong start at Oklahoma City (1.00 ERA, 0.84 WHIP) but who has yet to debut and is considered a mid-rotation arm at best
• Joe Wieland, a 25-year-old the Dodgers acquired along with Yasmani Grandal from the Padres in the Matt Kemp deal who has 39 career innings in the majors

There’s also Brandon Beachy, the once-promising Atlanta Braves right-hander who is trying to return from a second Tommy John surgery by this summer.

In other words: not a whole heck of a lot. Until Friedman can come up with a more stable solution, expect the above four to be on call, possibly shuttling back and forth between L.A. and OKC.

Longer term, there’s at least a possibility, it would seem, that top prospect/phenom Julio Urias could be called upon at some point.

But even if the precocious left-hander continues tearing up Double-A at age 18 (20.2 IP, 13 H, 5 ER, 26:3 K:BB), that likely wouldn’t happen until after the All-Star break. And even then, maybe only if things don’t get better for Ryu or go south once again for Anderson. Baseball America managing editor JJ Cooper offered this about Urias:

That leaves external options via trade. There will be—scratch that, there already is, per Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times—chatter and speculation about the usual suspects, like Johnny Cueto of the Cincinnati Reds, Jordan Zimmermann of the Washington Nationals or Cole Hamels of the Philadelphia Phillies. And any of those three, among others, are possible targets down the line.

But the Friedman-led front office has indicated in the past that there’s no interest in trading one of the franchise’s top two building-block prospects, shortstop Corey Seager or Urias, when both are massive talents on the verge of helping the big league club at minimal cost. Such a big-name pitcher is going to require a big-time return. Says USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale:

Could desperation in the form of a setback with Ryu or another injury to Anderson—or worse, Kershaw or Greinke—change that? Sure, but that remains to be seen.

Perhaps rather than honing in on another star starter, the Dodgers would be better served targeting one or two capable mid-rotation arms. Someone like Milwaukee Brewers right-hander Kyle Lohse, Oakland Athletics lefty Scott Kazmir or Reds righty Mike Leake, to name a few.

None of those three are sexy superstars the Dodgers have come to be associated with, but they’re all proven pitchers who would be major improvements over what L.A. currently is calling the back end of its rotation. What’s more, all three are free agents after the season, which would make them much easier gets, and that’s up Friedman’s alley.

Besides, with a one-two like Kershaw and Greinke, and with Ryu eventually as the No. 3, the Dodgers don’t need another star-caliber starter. They do, however, need innings.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com