The on-again, off-again flirtation between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals regarding Andrew McCutchen appears to be dead for good.
With the Nationals trading Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning to the restocking Chicago White Sox for center fielder Adam Eaton, McCutchen’s services are no longer needed in D.C. It leaves the Pirates, who had been actively seeking to trade their best player, without anyone to trade with and said player thinking the Pirates really don’t see a future with him involved.
It also leaves the fans wondering what exactly it is that the front office is doing. All they see are the names the Pirates sent off to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for outfielder Adam Eaton.
Some may harken back to the days of Barry Bonds, as McCutchen has provided a face to a franchise seriously lacking one since Bonds’ departure for San Francisco in free agency back in 1993. It took over 20 years for the team to be relevant again, with the Pirates making three straight trips to the National League playoffs as a Wild Card team from 2013 to 2015.
However, Bonds and McCutchen have more than just being the face of the organization in common now. They both were part of messy and ugly trade situations, as Bonds was nearly gone to Atlanta in 1992 before manager Jim Leyland stepped in and nixed the deal. This time McCutchen had little say in the matter, but still didn’t find a home that wanted him long-term. Are fans worried that once McCutchen leaves Pittsburgh, it’ll be another 20 years before they see another playoff berth.
This past season wasn’t so great, and with McCutchen coming off of his worst season of his eight-year career (.256/.336/.430) it appears the Pirates wanted something high-end for the guy who stuck around to help out this franchise over the last few years.
Let’s remember, McCutchen has a career line of .292/.381/.487 as a hitter. Clearly there is some value, but what it is after that tank of a season wasn’t fully known. Now it is, and the market wasn’t what the Pirates thought it would be.
Sure, big-name trades are common in Major League Baseball and it is still possible some other team steps in, but if you are going to make a move on a player who is the face of the franchise and has taken less money to be part of your organization, you best not swing and miss.
That’s exactly what the Pirates seem to have done by first overvaluing McCutchen on the open market and then demanding a King’s ransom from the one willing trade partner they had in the Washington Nationals.
In the process, the Pirates have likely alienated the player who has been the good employee and the fans who have fallen in love with him in the process. All the good will of three-straight playoff appearances is likely gone.
Hope it was all worth it.
Then again, GM Neal Huntington didn’t exactly sound like a man ready to make McCutchen a long-term member of this club going forward either.
“There’s a lot of the narrative we don’t focus on because we can’t control it,” Huntington said Wednesday. “I would imagine it’s frustrating for Andrew to have read as if it’s a matter of when, and not if [he’ll be traded]. I guess I’ve probably led to that, because we’ve talked about how he has two years left under contract.
“There is an end point for every player. There was an end point for Derek Jeter, it just happened that he chose to stay in New York. More often than not the end point comes well before the player retires in our game, in this day and age. Even in our game right now, there’s just a handful of guys that are elite players that are playing or will play the entirety of their career in one spot.”
So, Pirates fans, get ready to say goodbye to the face of your franchise one way or the other. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another 20 years of “rebuilding” to get to the playoffs once again, right?
