BRADENTON, Fla. — Sean Rodriguez still has trouble describing the emotions he experienced last month when his teammate and close friend, Andrew McCutchen, was traded to the Giants.
There was anger at first, followed by frustration and confusion. Rodriguez even anticipated the Pirates possibly being sellers this offseason, telling reporters at PiratesFest in December that he was concerned with losing another member of the Pirates' core.
However, nothing could prepare him for the reality of seeing both McCutchen and Gerrit Cole traded away.
"Yeah, there was definitely a lot of confusion," Rodriguez told DKPittsburghSports.com. "You don’t replace a guy like Cutch. You don’t come across a guy like that. You hope you’ve got guys coming up through the farm system that can and hopefully turn into that, but the reality is you just don’t. ... This guy, the accolades he racked up and collected, are second to very few over a span of baseball, not to mention in a Pirates uniform. Yeah, that’s not the kind of guy you replace, and Cole obviously was the ace of the staff. He’s very difficult to replace as well. Yeah, you get thrown a pretty decent hammer, and you’re either going to choose to sit back and swing or sit back and take."
Rodriguez is choosing to do both. On one hand, the 32-year-old called the decision to trade both players "difficult," saying he did not envy Neal Huntington. On the other hand, though, Rodriguez has been outspoken about the Pirates' past moves.
Rodriguez said at PiratesFest that trading a "big piece of the core" after the Pirates' 98-win season in 2015 affected team chemistry and, in turn, the club's on-field performance. Although Rodriguez did not name any player specifically, the Pirates traded Neil Walker to the Mets in December 2015. The club has since missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.
It was no secret the Pirates were considering trading both Cole and McCutchen this offseason. Huntington admitted as much to a roomful of fans during a question-and-answer session at PiratesFest.
Cole, 27, was under contract for two more seasons and was the subject of trade rumors for six weeks before a deal was completed. McCutchen, meanwhile, is entering the final year of a contract that will pay him $14.5 million. He was nearly traded to the Nationals last December before the Pirates ultimately decided to keep him.
Rodriguez, though, wasn't entirely sure what direction the club would decide to go in. He signed a two-year, $11.5 million contract with the Braves last offseason after he put up a .270/.349/.510 line with 18 home runs for the Pirates in 2016.
But he was out until July after a stolen police cruiser collided with his car in Miami last January, requiring surgery to repair a torn left rotator cuff, a dislocated biceps tendon and labrum damage.
Rodriguez played in only 15 games for the Braves before they traded him back to the Pirates, where he hit .167 in 39 games to finish the season. Re-acquiring a veteran such as Rodriguez seemed to indicate the Pirates may not be so quick to act as sellers, but in the end, they chose to begin what Clint Hurdle described Wednesday as a "new era of Pirates baseball."
"It’s hard to kind of make out what they’re thinking and stuff like that, but at the end of the day you realize it’s not my job to try to figure out what they’re thinking or what their goal is because I show up here with one goal in mind every day and every year; that’s to win," Rodriguez said. "I don’t want to be that guy, but I guess I could be that guy who says it shouldn’t matter who you go to war with. But it does. You want to know that the guys in the trenches with you are ready to battle and have been through the battles, have been through some of those mini-wars, but yeah, I can’t say that the guys here aren’t going to be able to do the job. We’ll see."
Rodriguez expressed optimism about the players the Pirates do have returning, including Josh Bell, Francisco Cervelli, Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco and Jordy Mercer. He added that each man who has reported to spring training so far — Marte and Polanco are among those who have yet to arrive — looks "hungrier" than in years past.
Like Cervelli told reporters Tuesday, Rodriguez is embracing the underdog role. He wants to be a passionate leader in a clubhouse that lost two of its loudest, most well-respected voices. Rodriguez also wanted to arrive early to begin delivering a "one team, one goal" message, but he still described his emotions as "remorseful" with McCutchen no longer a part of that goal.
"You sit there obviously and you get upset," Rodriguez said. "Kind of let it be for just a little bit, let it soak in. Obviously you start to think about what it’s going to be like moving forward. It was a while sitting there frustrated, kind of upset about what the Pirates were doing. At the same time, you sit back and say, ‘You know what, they’re moving in a direction they feel is going to work and is going to be good.’ You either jump on board with that or you sit in that lonely place of upset, frustration and depression."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY