Friday Insider: Cutch's hitting coach says 'it's not going to happen overnight'

ATLANTA — Andrew McCutchen spoke with complete confidence Wednesday at SunTrust Park that he knows the issue behind his latest slump.

That confidence is shared by the Pirates' coaching staff, despite statistics and analytics showing a steep regression since he was named National League MVP in 2013.

The feeling around the organization is it's a matter of when, not if, McCutchen will break out of a 2-for-24 slump that had him out of the starting lineup Wednesday and Thursday, as his average has dipped to .203 with a .274 on-base percentage in 46 games.

One member of the coaching staff went into detail regarding the coaching staff's approach, and confirming the Pirates' belief in the center fielder.



"We have confidence in him; there’s no doubt," Pirates hitting coach Jeff Branson told DKPittsburghSports.com Thursday morning. "He is a middle-of-the-order guy who can do damage at any particular time to be able to help this team. The confidence has not wavered at all. We believe in him. He believes in himself. We just have to find that one thing that’s going to allow him to be consistent."

Therein lies the problem.

McCutchen and the coaching staff think they have pinpointed the issue that plagued him during his slump in 2016 and reappeared once the season began last month. His torso is rotating when he swings the bat, leading to him pulling pitches that are on the outside part of the plate.

Word of such an issue spreads quickly across Major League Baseball thanks to advanced scouting reports, so opposing pitchers are throwing him sliders, cutters and curveballs on the outside corner.

Like last season, McCutchen is rolling over on such pitches. Forty-four percent of his contact is on the ground, compared to just 15.2 percent line drives, per Fan Graphs. Those are the worst numbers of his career, and a significant drop from 2016.

Only 31.2 percent of his contact is classified as hard. Branson described it as a two-part problem: McCutchen is not locking down the front side of his body, which leads to the twisting motion, and it's throwing off his pitch selection.

He's swinging at a lesser percentage of balls outside the zone than last season, but it's the quality of pitches he's swinging at that's the problem.

Though Clint Hurdle was guarded when the topic was broached Wednesday night, Branson went into more detail, saying the staff is concentrating solely on the mechanical issue. In turn, the pitch selection will improve.

"If we lock this down the other one will come with it," he added. "He knows what’s taking place. He knows what the problem is at the plate. It’s a matter of us, and him, locking that front side in, taking his work day into the game. That’s been the disconnection of it."

That flaw showed in Tuesday night's loss to the Braves, when McCutchen grounded into a pair of double plays, dropping his average to the Mendoza line, but Branson and the coaching staff thinks McCutchen is much closer to returning to form than the numbers might show.

McCutchen's wins above replacement is -0.1 — 0.8 points lower than 2016 and 6.9 lower than his MVP season. His slash line is .203/.274/.360 with seven doubles, one triple, six home runs and 20 RBI in 172 at-bats.

Prior to last season, McCutchen had been baseball's third-best player by WAR over the previous seven seasons and was ranked 46th all-time in WAR among players through 28 years old. Now his WAR is the 22nd-worst in baseball.

Yet, those numbers don't have the Pirates organization concerned. The analytically driven organization is aware of such regression, but Branson said he and the coaching staff toss that aside when a problem like this arises.

They have no doubt in McCutchen's physical ability for a variety of reasons, including the final month of 2016. During the final 32 days of last season, McCutchen owned a .287/.373/.513 slash line with six home runs and 22 RBI in 31 games.

He's also just 30 years old and healthy.

"He is (much closer) than the numbers show," Branson continued. "Obviously everybody sees the end results, everybody sees the average. We look beyond that. We look at the quality of the at-bat, the pitch selection, pitch recognition. Is he swinging at pitches he wants to swing at, or is he swinging at pitches just because they’re pitches? We look deeper than that as far as the actual numbers themselves to try to gain information."

Branson added that the coaching staff has solved the issue in the batting cage, saying McCutchen's swing has been nearly flawless when hitting inside over the past week.

They are just waiting for him to consistently produce in a game. He showed progress Wednesday night when pinch-hitting in the 10th inning. McCutchen drove an outside cutter to center field instead of pulling it to start the Pirates' offensive explosion that included seven runs and back-to-back-to-back home runs.

He showed regression later in the inning, though, when he struck out on five pitches, whiffing on a curveball outside of the zone.

"He’s aware of what the biggest issue is," Branson said. "Again, it takes time. It’s not going to happen overnight. It takes work, and it takes commitment to do it and to make sure we get better at it."

The Pirates are giving him that time, and McCutchen's confidence in a return to form is carried throughout the clubhouse. The players see how hard he's working to fix the problem, arriving early to take an extra session in the cage and taking time to study more film. Any frustrations he has haven't bled over on the field or into the clubhouse.

Josh Harrison was thrilled to see McCutchen's single Wednesday night. Not overwhelmingly so, but McCutchen's teammates know what he means to their chances of winning.

And like the coaching staff, they don't see this slump being anything more than part of the game.

"It's a tough game, mentally, and he's handling this like a professional," Harrison said. "He’s battling his butt off. He’s extremely confident in his ability and he knows what he brings to the table. He’s going to work through it. That's the type of guy he is."

• Superstitions are commonplace in baseball. Watch any at-bat, and you'll see all sorts of routines. But Josh Bell took it to another level last month.

The 23-year-old first baseman was batting just .156 when the Pirates arrived in St. Louis for a three-game series against the Cardinals on April 17. Before the trip began, though, Bell broke his iPhone.

Instead of rushing to the Apple Store to buy another, Bell turned to an old flip phone he's had since high school and proceeded to go 4-for-12 with his first home run of the season during that series in St. Louis.

That made him decide to stick with the flip phone for a few more weeks.

"It was actually nice to just be unplugged for a while," he told me with a smile. "I've done it in the past when I've broken my phone. It just helps me stay focused away from the field."

His statistics since breaking that iPhone: a .267 average with an .356 on-base percentage, nine home runs and 19 RBI in 35 games. He couldn't hold out with the flip phone much longer, though.

Bell caved and bought another iPhone last week.

"I needed Uber and Apple Music," he joked while holding up the new phone. "I wasn't totally off the grid since I have an iPad, but it was kind of nice. Not much has changed for me at the plate since I got the new one, so hopefully I'm OK."

• The trip to Atlanta was the first time many of the Pirates have seen Sean Rodriguez since he and his family were in a horrific car accident on Jan. 28 in Miami.

Rodriguez needed shoulder surgery after the vehicle he was driving collided with a stolen police car, and his wife, Giselle, and two of their children were hospitalized with injuries. The infielder signed a two-year contract with the Braves during the offseason, but is expected to miss the rest of the season.

He's now working out every morning, running sprints in the outfield and playing catch to work his way back. The Pirates were overjoyed to see him on the field prior to Tuesday's game.

Gregory Polanco and head athletic trainer Todd Tomczyk delayed a workout to chat with Rodriguez. Then catcher Chris Stewart and other members of the staff stayed on the field to talk to him for nearly 20 minutes.

That joy came after a chaotic 24 hours when the Pirates heard of the crash. Stewart told me he panicked when hearing the news, urging his wife, Lindsey, who is friends with Giselle, to text them immediately to check on them.

Rodriguez was a valuable player in so many respects for the Pirates, but he was also quite loved in the clubhouse.

"We freaked out. We were just so thankful to hear they’re alive and someone is watching over them," Stewart said. "Obviously appreciative of everything that could have happened didn’t happen."

Players I spoke with are even more excited to see what Rodriguez does with a chance to play everyday, and they hope that time comes sooner rather than later.

• Speaking of Polanco, he's back from the disabled list after a hamstring injury sidelined him for the past 10 days. The timing was unfortunate since he had been on a four-game hitting streak and seemed to discover momentum at the plate since switching to right field.

He was overwhelmed with frustration once the injury occurred in Phoenix, but he followed the same routine that helped him get out of that hitting slump: Calling his mother, Apolonia Linares.

Polanco described his mother as the person who gives him strength during such times, and the two speak daily. He even moved her and his father to Pittsburgh once he settled down in the city.

"She's so important in my life," Polanco told me. "She's the one who talks me through everything. I make sure we talk everyday."

DUSTIN DOPIRAK IN PITTSBURGH

• I wrote a story last week on Adam Frazier that touched on his ability to hit the inside of the baseball and go the other way. It missed some important points I found fascinating and extremely telling upon a second glance at batted ball data.

According to Fan Graphs, Frazier goes opposite field 38 percent of the time, which is more than any Pirates position player currently on the roster. He's also the only position player on the roster who hits the ball to the opposite field more often than he pulls the ball, as he only hits to the pull side 24.1 percent of the time. David Freese has the exact same pull rate and opposite field rate — 28.4 percent.

This is in fact standard for Frazier, as Freese suggested in the above story. According to Fan Graphs, Frazier has never pulled the ball more than he hit to the opposite field in his professional career. He's never had an opposite field rate lower than 37.2 percent and has never had a pull rate higher than 35.6 percent.

And it appears to be the ability to hit to the opposite field that explains better than perhaps any other peripheral figure why Frazier is hitting .361.

His hard contact rate is actually fairly modest at 27.9 percent, Six other active position players — Francisco Cervelli, Freese, John Jaso, Stewart, McCutchen and Harrison — have higher figures with Cervelli leading every-day Pirates at 41.8 percent. He also has a soft-contact rate of 20.3 percent. Just five current position players have a higher rate — Harrison, Freese, Alen Hanson, Polanco and Gift Ngoepe.

But Frazier uses the whole field, which makes him harder to defend. His batting average on balls in play is a remarkable .416. Only Ngoepe (.440) has a higher one, and the next closest after Frazier is Harrison at .319.

• The batted-ball data is also interesting if you want to directly compare McCutchen and Frazier and see why one has succeeded and the other has not. McCutchen actually has a higher hard contact rate at 31.2 percent and a lower soft contact rate at 17.4 percent.

But Frazier is hitting to the opposite field 38.0 percent of the time to McCutchen's 20.3 percent and McCutchen is pulling the ball 46.4 percent of the time to Frazier's 24.1 percent. Not exactly related, but Frazier also has a line-drive rate of 25.3 percent to McCutchen's 15.2 percent. Combine all that together and you have a 158 point difference (.361 to .203) in batting average and an even bigger difference in batting average on balls in play (.416 to .220).

• Considering that, I was a little bit surprised to see that McCutchen's pull/center/opposite field splits are close to the norm for his career. In fact, his current splits (46.4/32.3/20.3) are almost identical to  what they were in 2013 when he won the MVP award (47.1/32.9/20.0). The difference is in the quality of contact, as Lance mentioned above. He had a 39.9 percent hard contact rate that year to 31.6 percent this year and a 10.9 percent soft contact rate then to 17.4 percent this season.

• One more interesting thing I found while reading batted-ball data this week while Lance was in Atlanta. Neal Huntington has pointed out that a number of individuals deserve better numbers than they have because of the peripheral data. This is true for a few individuals, particularly Cervelli. But it isn't as true for the Pirates as a whole. Just three teams have a higher soft contact rate than the Pirates' 21.4 percent. Just four teams have a lower hard contact rate than their 29 percent. They do have one of the lowest strikeout rates in baseball at 19 percent and only three teams have a worse batting average on balls in play than the Pirates' .269, but that's less because they're unlucky than it is that they aren't hitting the ball that hard comparatively, the last two days being an obvious exception.

MARK KABOLY IN PITTSBURGH

• Ben Roethlisberger took some time to figure out if he was going to return this year. He eventually -- after nearly three months -- decided to come back.

Some have suggested that old Chuck Noll quote of "if you are thinking of retiring, you've already retired."

All due respect to Mr. Noll, but that doesn't apply to Roethlisberger -- or at least what I've witnessed.

Roethlisberger has been as engaged, or maybe more engaged during the first week of OTAs than I've seen before. There's no thinking about retirement or anything like that for him. It's status quo.

He's working with Jesse James; he's getting mad when a young receiver doesn't run the exact right route; and he's taking more snaps than he probably should be for the end of May. If that's a guy who's thinking about retirement, then he has me baffled.

Sure, he said that he didn't give the organization more than a one-year commitment, but that's nothing new. He's said, at least over the past half decade or so, that he's not looking past the year in front of him.

• If you were caught off guard by the recent release of Ladarius Green, you aren't the only one. A number of Steelers I talked to over the three OTA sessions so far told me that they were kind of surprised as well.

In fact, there was really no announcement to the team that they let him go.

One player told me "nobody really said much about it to us."

You would be shocked how many times something like that happens in the NFL.

• Speaking of concussions, the Steelers have taken to some new technology to help prevent concussions to some of their key and high-risk players including Roethlisberger.

A company last year came in and scanned a couple player's heads with some innovative technology in order to produce a custom-made inner bladder to their helmet that is supposed to limit concussions.

The theory is that the better the helmet fits a player's specific head, the better they can prevent concussions.

Roethlisberger, Mike Mitchell, Le'Veon Bell were a couple of players measured last year. Another one was Green, who obviously now won't have a chance to wear it for the Steelers. Antonio Brown was not fitted for a new helmet because he wears a different manufacturer than the other players.

• One knock on Landry Jones early in his career was his accuracy -- or lack thereof, especially during OTAs.

It got a lot better over the past two years where he threw a pretty good ball. Now, at least through my eyes, Jones has really struggled throwing the ball where he wants early in these OTAs.

Just an observation.

• Observations can be misleading. During rookie minicamp two weeks ago, Joshua Dobbs appeared to not have a very strong arm and was inaccurate. When the big boys showed up this week, Dobbs now appears to have a plenty strong enough arm and some pretty good accuracy, especially with the deep ball.

Now, it could be because Jones has looked sketchy at times by comparison sake.

• I talked to former Penn State and current UCLA defensive coordinator Tom Bradley the other day. I asked him about Takk McKinley, the linebacker who was drafted a couple slots before the Steelers picked.

Bradley said that McKinley would've been a good fit with the Steelers and a better fit with us media types.

"You would've loved him because he just can't help himself with you guys," he said.

Darn it.

• Arthur Moats -- who lost a couple of pounds during the offseason -- hasn't played a lick of inside linebacker since coming over from the Bills four years ago. And, as of now, there's no plan of throwing him inside this year despite a definite need for depth at the position behind Ryan Shazier and Vince Williams.

• Some quick-hitters from the first week of OTA's:

- Martavis Bryant play on the field has been spectacular, but his interview with the media on the first day he returned from his yearlong drug suspension was knocked out of the park. Bryant said all the right things, spoke from the heart, elaborated on questions and didn't dodge a single thing. Now, that might not mean much, but to me, it does. His mind seems to be in the right place, and that's half the battle. That's something you couldn't say about him 16 months ago.

- Williams, to me, seems like he's just a tad nervous about replacing Lawrence Timmons, which is fine. He should be nervous. What I saw out of Williams over the first week is that he's a lot quicker than he used to be and his pass-coverage skills have greatly improved. Will this translate into a game where he has to cover Rob Gronkowski? Who knows, but maybe we all overreacted a little bit when it came to not bringing in an inside linebacker.

- Justin Hunter doesn't look quick at all; Marcus Tucker could be this year's Demarcus Ayers; the Steelers have some really short offensive linemen beyond their top six; and Xavier Grimble still drops too many passes.