There’s just one way to explain Andrew McCutchen “only” finishing fifth in the National League MVP voting in 2015. The guy just had an off year. Sad, but true.
But from the looks of things, 2015 is about to be ancient history.
As the Pittsburgh Pirates prepare to set sail on their follow-up to a rollicking 98-win season, they must be positively beaming over what McCutchen is doing this spring. Their superstar center fielder may only be hitting .243 with a .317 on-base percentage, but he’s slugged five home runs to help push his spring OPS to .966.
One of those dingers hasn’t landed yet. Specifically, this one:
OK, so, watching a former MVP go to town on some baseballs in spring training shouldn’t surprise us too much. This is a guy who hit .292 with an .889 OPS and 23 home runs last year, ultimately checking in as the National League’s fourth-best hitter. And over the last four years, only Joey Votto has been better.
Just because something’s not surprising, however, doesn’t mean it’s not a welcome sight.
Anyone with a decent memory or Internet search capabilities knows that power was hard for McCutchen to come by this time last year. He didn’t hit a single home run last spring, and that ended up being a preview of an early-season slump, as McCutchen hit just .188 with a .571 OPS and two home runs in his first 26 games of 2015.
Though most everyone was quick to blame the left knee issues that had dogged McCutchen during spring training, the man himself shot the notion down and accused everyone of “overanalyzing” his struggles. Nowadays, though, the 29-year-old is singing a different tune.
“Got my power back. Got my legs back,” McCutchen told Stephen J. Nesbitt of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in mid-March. “It’s about using them now.”
Hooking McCutchen up to a lie detector sadly isn’t an option in figuring out if he’s telling the truth. But we do know what he looks like with a pair of healthy legs, and that particular hitter looks a lot like…well, a lot like the hitter McCutchen is now.
If we flash back to 2015, it’s clear it was only partially an off year for McCutchen. He definitely struggled in the beginning, but in his final 131 games he hit .313 with a .953 OPS. Basically, he was his 2012 (.953 OPS) and 2014 (.952 OPS) self again.
The hot finish was legit. McCutchen boosted his on-base percentage by upping his walk rate from 9 percent early in the year to 15.3 percent down the stretch. And courtesy of Baseball Savant, his average exit velocity readings confirm that he was simply hitting the ball harder:
- First 26 games: 88.02 mph
- Final 131 games: 92.00 mph
As for what specifically changed for McCutchen, Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs noticed a couple of things.
In a piece at Just a Bit Outside, Sullivan noticed that early-season McCutchen seemed incapable of hitting the ball with authority to left field, and that, in a seemingly related story, his swing suddenly didn’t feature a noticeable weight transfer from his back foot to his front foot. That is, he was swinging like a right-handed hitter with a bad left knee would be swinging.
But then everything changed. After that slow start, McCutchen began crushing extra-base hits to left field (also center and right field) again. And as Sullivan noticed, the weight transfer from McCutchen’s back foot to front foot was pretty much back to normal.
After a finish like that, there admittedly wasn’t too much doubt that McCutchen would pick up where he left off. But it still serves as a nice bit of affirmation that his left knee woes appear to be firmly in the past.
Four of his five spring home runs have been to the left of center. And if we plug some of the images from the above video into a low-budget Photoshop production, we get a picture of a healthy weight transfer:
Assuming McCutchen’s legs are indeed fully healthy going into 2016, consistent power might not be the only thing we see out of him. After he attempted only 16 last year, we could also see more stolen bases. Better defense could also be in the cards.
And as McCutchen gears up for the 2016 season looking like his old self, it would seem he also has a new role to adjust to. And this, too, is an area that makes it easy to have high hopes.
As many have surely already heard, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle has experimented with McCutchen in the No. 2 spot in his batting order. Considering McCutchen is a No. 3 hitter by trade, this is unusual.
But although the Pirates may not be going by the book, they are going by The Book. Written by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin, Sky Kalkman wrote at Beyond the Box Score that The Book highlights how “the [No. 2] hitter comes to bat in situations about as important as the [No. 3] hitter, but more often.” As such, it’s actually a better place for a team to put its best hitter.
The Pirates have more reason to believe this than most teams. Jayson Stark of ESPN.com reports that they sold McCutchen on the idea by showing him how frequently he came to bat with two outs and nobody on in 2015. And in general, he’s come to bat with the bases empty a lot in his career:
If the Pirates do indeed make McCutchen their new No. 2 hitter, he may start coming to the plate with runners on more often in 2016. That could be a very good thing. And not just because it would mean more RBI opportunities—because, really, who cares?
What’s more important is the fact that McCutchen has been a notably better hitter with the bases occupied throughout his career. With the bases empty, he’s a .293 hitter with an .857 OPS. With runners on, he’s a .305 hitter with a .927 OPS.
If McCutchen lives up to that performance while also coming up in those situations more often in 2016, that could be yet another force that puts his “off” 2015 season behind him. The end result could be a season as good or better than any of McCutchen’s best years.
That’s how we’d sum up our feelings in words, anyway. Here’s the GIF translation:
McCutchen back? McCutchen back.
Regular-season stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. Spring training stats courtesy of MLB.com.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com