Andrew McCutchen walked into PNC Park's press conference room with a walking boot on his left foot, took a seat on the podium and said what was on just about everybody's mind.
"It’s pretty disappointing."
On Monday, McCutchen was pulled mid-game with left Achilles tightness in what the team called a precautionary move. McCutchen took to Twitter later that night to tweet, "I'm fine," to try to quell some fears. But as it would turn out, he had a small tear in that Achilles, and his season is effectively over. The team placed him on the 10-day injured list Wednesday, and if they need the roster spot, it would seem reasonable to assume a transfer to the 60-day injured list could be on the table.
"Physically, I feel the same," McCutchen said. "I don’t feel any different, honestly. I guess the mental part of knowing now, you’re a little more cognizant of what’s happening or what you feel. Still feel relatively the same since the last time I was out there on the field. That in itself is what propelled me to tweet that I was fine. I felt fine."
In his weekly update with the media, director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk did not explicitly say that McCutchen's season was over, but rather that "it's gonna be a challenge." McCutchen is expected to be in a walking boot for the next six weeks and there are only three and a half weeks left in the regular season, so the challenge is apparent.
There was "minimal thought" on McCutchen's part of trying to push through the injury, and he admitted that if the Pirates were closer in the playoff race, he would have considered it. But given where he and the team are at the moment, pushing through it just doesn't make sense.
"If I play through it, the risk of tearing it fully goes up," McCutchen said. "Don’t want that because it would be kind of hard for a 36, about to turn 37-year-old having a completely torn Achilles. More than likely I ain’t coming back from that. I had to ask myself those questions of what’s important, what do I want to do?
"For me, I’m not gonna go out like this. I wanna continue to keep playing and push through this, let this heal and be ready to go for 2024."
Surgery will not be necessary to heal, and Tomczyk projects he will make a full recovery. That will also give his right elbow, which has given him fits all season, some down time to rest, though it had already started to improve to the point that he was expected to start throwing again.
So ideally, McCutchen would be back as more than just a designated hitter for 2024.
Even with the lingering injuries, McCutchen was one of the Pirates' most consistent hitters this year, slashing .256/.378/.397 over 473 trips to the plate. While he lost some pop this year, he posted his best on-base percentage since his last All-Star campaign in 2015. His 112 OPS+ was the highest of any Pirate.
"I just wanted to be better than I was last year," McCutchen said. "I felt like last year wasn’t who I was as a player. I felt like I was better than that, and I believe I was able to showcase that on the field. The numbers did improve. The homers weren’t there like I wanted them to be considering how I started the season. Things happen."
McCutchen will finish the season with 12 home runs, which if you exclude 2019 and 2020, where he played in fewer than 60 games each year, it's his lowest homer total since his rookie season in 2009. It also means he will finish with 299 career homers, one shy of a milestone shot.
McCutchen's contract is up at the end of the season, but the expectation this entire season has been that he is going to stay put this winter.
"I’ve vocalized that plenty of times about wanting to be here," McCutchen said. "It’s not gonna feel right anywhere else. At the end of the day, I have to make the right decisions for myself, for my family. Whatever happens here, in the future, it’s indicative of that."
He also was one of the unquestioned leaders of the clubhouse, which has become even more valuable of late since the team shed most of its veterans at the trade deadline.
"Just having that leadership presence, older veteran guy that's been there, done that," Ke'Bryan Hayes said. "He's won an MVP, been in the playoffs. Just him knowing what it takes. Just little words he would say after a game, whether it would be a tough loss or something like that. Just the little things he would say here and there."
"We lost a core member of our team," Ji Hwan Bae said.
So while his season is almost certainly over, McCutchen is staying around the team "as much as they'll let me be around."
"I still want to be around the guys and try to support them in any way that I can," McCutchen said. "I know it can be tough. It’s a very young team and it just got a lot younger."
It didn't come up in the medical report, but it's safe to say McCutchen's funny bone is fully in tact.
Having him return would help fill out a potentially plus lineup in 2024 assuming Oneil Cruz returns to form and some rookies continue to make strides. A repeat of this year from McCutchen would fit in nicely for that future team.
"It was a good year, a decent year for me," McCutchen said. "I just wanted to finish strong. I wanted to go into September and finish strong because my last couple months weren’t where I wanted them to be. They were below par. … I just wanted to finish strong in September and I had a good start in September. Just a little disappointing that I wasn’t able to finish the season how I wanted to finish."
