McCutchen gave the Pirates life after years of mediocrity
When the Pittsburgh Pirates take the field for their home opener against the Minnesota Twins, the PNC Park faithful will not hear the announcement of No. 22 as a member of the lineup for the first time since 2009.
It's hard to imagine what one player on an expiring contract means to a franchise - to put into words their value or omnipresence. To Pirates fans, it will vary, but the affect Andrew McCutchen had will be lasting and immeasurable.
After getting drafted out of high school in 2005, McCutchen had shown enough by 2009 to indicate his dominance could no longer be contained in the minors. On June 4, making his first start in center field and batting leadoff in front of 20,000 Pirates fans, McCutchen reached base on three occasions and came around to score each time.
While McCutchen's first few seasons were fraught with failure, attendance was on the rise - and the fans weren't coming to see Neil Walker and Pedro Alvarez. They were coming to see the future. They were coming to see McCutchen.
By 2012, the secret was completely out. McCutchen had led the team by WAR in every year he'd been a member, and he was just celebrating his 25th birthday. Attendance swelled to two million, while the center fielder attended his second All-Star game and claimed his first Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards.
Building around McCutchen and now led by Clint Hurdle, the Pirates gave a full-time job to Starling Marte, and signed Russell Martin to a two-year, $17-million deal to work behind the dish for the 2013 season. With a catcher who knew how to manage a pitching staff, the addition of A.J. Burnett would turn into one of the best moves the franchise made, and the club would continue the rotation makeover by adding Francisco Liriano and promoting a 22-year-old right-hander named Gerrit Cole. The notoriously frugal Pirates were going for it on savvy signings that didn't break the bank, but still displayed to fans an investment in winning.
In 2013, the group came together in perfect harmony, as McCutchen beat out Paul Goldschmidt and Yadier Molina to win the NL MVP award - the first one in Pirates history since Barry Bonds in 1992. It may seem a bit haunting to Pirates fans now that he, too, wound up on the Giants roster.
While personal accolades are validation of McCutchen's already-impressive resume, it's the fact the Pirates won 94 games that year and made their first postseason since 1991 that was most important. Pittsburgh - long a pillar of penny-pinching mediocrity in baseball - had broken through with a payroll of $66 million. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Cardinals, who won the division that year, had a payroll of nearly $117 million.
As a result of not winning the division, the Pirates were forced to play the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card game, and, in one of the most memorable moments in recent playoff history, PNC Park was especially unfriendly to the visiting team's starting pitcher - Johnny Cueto - as years of frustration boiled over into booing, and a fortuitous swing from their new catcher:
That was just the beginning of a three-year run into October for the Pirates, and a five-year streak of at least two million in attendance that was snapped last year, when Pittsburgh won 75 games.
Now, McCutchen will begin his tenure with the Giants while still set to become a free agent following the 2018 campaign. The Giants will visit PNC Park for a three-game set from May 11-13.
The 30-year-old McCutchen is one of four players to have hit 200 home runs while donning a Pirates uniform - a history that dates back to 1891. He accrued 44.4 WAR, and ranks ninth all-time in franchise history.
Perhaps most impressively though, in a history that includes Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Bonds - among others - McCutchen is the only Pirates player to ever hit at least 200 home runs and steal 100 bases.
Over the past calendar year, trade rumors had plagued McCutchen. And, after a down year at the plate and in the field, the Pirates opened the season with the franchise cornerstone in right field. McCutchen responded the only way baseball fans should have expected - with a 121 OPS+, and filling in at center field when Marte was suspended after 13 games in right. After that bounce-back season, his wife gave birth to their son in November. The boy was named 'Steel', in homage to the Steel City.
Trading away McCutchen is a painful Band-Aid for the Pirates and their fans to rip off, and the return from the Giants may seem underwhelming. But, behind all the emotional investment in a person that plays a sport for a living, there's a business.
For Pittsburgh, the running of sports teams as a business is an especially haunting specter. Even if you knew the track record of the Pirates, and you had reconciled the fact mediocrity would return, it doesn't lessen the pain. Because with McCutchen on your team, the good times were never going to end, regardless.