He's back. Again.
Andrew McCutchen has re-signed with the Pirates, per source, again reuniting the team with its most beloved face of the franchise this millennium.
The deal, pending a physical, will be for one year and $5 million, the same base contract he had last year.
McCutchen is coming off of 2023 campaign where he slashed .256/.378/.397 with 12 home runs, 43 RBIs and 11 stolen bases. An elbow injury in spring training limited him to just eight games in the field, and while the Pirates have stated a desire to have him play more defense, it would seem likely that he will be the team's primary designated hitter again.
Still, with only two sure bets in next year's outfield (Jack Suwinski and Bryan Reynolds), having McCutchen chip in the field would be a boost.
"Our expectation is we want to give it [playing the outfield] a shot, and he wants the same thing," Ben Cherington said at the Winter Meetings earlier this month. "We’d go into spring training with an open mind to doing that and prepare for it. It’s not a prerequisite I would say or it’s not like a full-stop criteria or anything like that but it’s our desire because it would help the team and he would probably prefer that. We’ll have to go by how he’s feeling and put his best interests in mind.”
A reunion with McCutchen was the team's worst kept secret this offseason, with both sides stating a desire to get a deal done.
"I’ve vocalized that plenty of times about wanting to be here," McCutchen said in September. "It’s not gonna feel right anywhere else."
The team wanted to be cautious and see how his left Achilles recovered after he suffered a season-ending partial tear in early September, but even the earliest medical reports were optimistic that he would recover. This deal is unofficial confirmation that they still feel that way.
That's important, because if the opening months of last season showed anything, it's that McCutchen still has gas in the tank when he is healthy. He worsened his elbow injury in Los Angeles in early July diving out of the way of a ball, which placed him on the injured list. His power didn't come back after that injury, but for the first half of the year, he was seemingly getting some All-Star consideration, recording 10 home runs and an .854 OPS through the month of June. He hit just two home runs and had a .646 OPS from July through the end of the season.
The end product of a .776 OPS and 113 OPS+ was McCutchen's best offensive season since 2019, but had it not been for those injuries, it's fair to wonder what he could have done.
He certainly would have hit at least one more home run. He currently sits at 299, and while he hit several career milestones last season -- including 2,000 hits, 2,000 games played, 1,000 walks and 400 doubles -- that was the one big round number that he didn't check off in 2023. It's only fitting that he is virtually guaranteed to do it for the team where he rose to superstar status, winning an MVP in 2013 with five All-Star nods, four Silver Sluggers and Gold Glove also on his career résumé.
In Pittsburgh, though, the most memorable part of that stretch was his connection to the community and that he was the centerpiece of teams that ended a 20-year stretch of losing seasons and brought the team back into the playoffs.
The Pirates are hoping to make a similar leap forward in 2024. They'll have someone on the roster who knows what it takes to win in Pittsburgh.
