Standing in front of his locker inside the Pirates' clubhouse this morning, Andrew McCutchen addressed a now-deleted social media reply to a post describing his absence from yesterday's lineup as a "day off," by saying, "It's never a day off." 

"A day off, for me, is when I have on sneakers the whole game," McCutchen said. "It's a work day for me. I might have the start off, but I don't have the day off. No matter what, I gotta be prepared and ready to play. No matter what, no matter when." 

McCutchen, who had frequently either been held out of the lineup or tasked with playing in the field when Bryan Reynolds was recently dealing with a shoulder issue that forced him to serve as designated hitter, admitted playfully that he's always upset when he doesn't play. He wants to be in the lineup every day. But just because he isn't in the starting nine, doesn't mean the work stops. 

Earlier in his career when he was playing every day, McCutchen benefitted from scheduled days off. He remembers former bench coach Dave Jauss giving him the news prior to a game and he would take the chance to get a mental break and prepare for the next day.

It doesn't work like that now. The 38-year-old McCutchen said he's down for some of the game, but he has to make sure he's prepared to come in when needed. That was the case yesterday. While McCutchen said he was prepared to come in as a pinch hitter late in the game, Derek Shelton made the decision to use Alexander Canario in a spot where Jack Suwinski was hit for in the seventh inning. 

McCutchen wasn't aware of the reasoning for the decision, but Shelton did say following yesterday's game that Canario, who hadn't had an at-bat since the finale of last weekend's series in Cincinnati, was used due to his "ability to drive the ball out of the ballpark."

Canario ended up striking out and the Pirates, in a shutout loss, ended up going 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position. 

"I know I wasn’t going to go in and play defense. If I was going to hit, then you think about the Canario example, that may have had something to do with that. They don’t want to burn two guys," McCutchen said. "So, in that situation, that probably would’ve been a good situation for me to be in but I wasn’t going to go to the outfield right after. It just doesn’t make sense for me to do that and set myself up for an injury or something like that. Hitting, yes, I was ready to hit, but not play defense. I wasn’t necessarily upset about coming into the game or anything."