Kovacevic: Cutch's three blasts are fireworks for 'incredible' run

SAN DIEGO -- "It's good to be Cutch right now, huh?"

Those were Chris Stewart's words to home plate umpire Dana DeMuth minutes after Andrew McCutchen belted his third home run Sunday afternoon in the Pirates' 7-1 body slam of the Padres at Petco Park. And it's probably not possible to state it any better than that.

Not on this day. Not this month. Maybe not even when scoping the entire season, which is mindboggling given that McCutchen was languishing around the Mendoza Line at mid-May but now is at .292/.385/.535 with 20, then 21, then 22 home runs for No. 22. And over the past two-plus months, his .367 average and .475 on-base percentage -- those are really real, my friends -- are the best in Major League Baseball.

From Mendoza to MVP?



Yeah, that just might be where Pittsburgh's generational talent is headed if this surge goes on all summer.

"It's a special day," Clint Hurdle would say. "That's what I told him coming off the field. A special day. I've been fortunate to be around some players in this game who were at an elite level. Andrew's as good as any of them."

"He's special," Cutch's best bud, Josh Harrison, said. "There's only one of him."

"He's incredible," Gerrit Cole said after a strong start. "You look at what he does as a hitter and, from the pitcher's standpoint, there just aren't answers."

Stewart, after relaying to me that story about the ump, took that into detail only a catcher could offer.

"When he's hot, you just don't want to pitch to him," Stewart said. "Two of the at-bats, they figured that out. The other three, they didn't."

Those two, of course, were walks. Catchers also can be funny.

"When you're going against him, there really isn't a plan of attack," he continued. "He's got the ability to read what you're doing, adjust, drive the ball anywhere you put it ... I'm just glad he's on my team so I don't have to try to figure him out."

This was Cutch's third career three-home-run game, his most recent having come April 26, 2016, in Denver. Only Albert Pujols has more among active players, with four. But this also was like no other in that, one, it came at baseball's least hitter-friendly stadium and, two, as if to show off those traits Stewart described, he did it any which way he wanted.

His first came in the opening inning and was his 20th, achieving seven consecutive seasons at that plateau, a feat matched only by Willie Stargell with 13 from 1964-76:



Clayton Richard, San Diego's lefty who'd pitched fine against everyone else, underestimated the pop of that one. And Cutch did, too.

"I saw him put his head down on the way to first and shake it a little bit," Richard recalled. "Maybe he didn't think he got it."

He didn't.

"I was a little under it," Cutch said. "Thought it had a chance."

The high wind, best evidenced by poor Manuel Margot spinning out on the track, helped a bit. Still, Richard walked Cutch his next two times up.

The next home run, in the eighth off reliever Jose Torres, needed no help. It was absolutely annihilated, as Torres' reaction demonstrates even more convincingly than the final destination:



The final one, in the ninth, clanged off the right field foul pole in the shallowest part of Petco, with seemingly no one really sure it was a home run until first base umpire Chris Guccione shouted to Cutch near the bag, "Home run!" and circled his finger in the air.



But in between those last two, it must be noted, Cutch made this diving catch ...



... that, as he tells me in the three questions I asked him for the video below, briefly knocked the air from him: