For Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen, this weekend was one of highs and lows. McCutchen launched a pair of home runs off of Dodgers starter Kenta Maeda during Saturday’s 6-1 Pittsburgh win; he also, well, take a look for yourself at what happened Sunday:
On the 2016 season, McCutchen has had more lows than highs. Going into Monday’s game, he was hitting only .240 with an OPS (on-base plus slugging) 3 percent worse than the major-league average — easily the weakest batting numbers of his career — and he’s also been one of the worst statistical center fielders in baseball. Pro-rating his wins above replacement to 162 team games, McCutchen is on pace for a measly 1.1 WAR, which would be 68 percent worse than his previous career-low (3.4 as a rookie in 2009). His struggles rank among the main reasons Pittsburgh is under .500 with very little chance of getting back to the playoffs.
Up to this point, it wasn’t a stretch to say McCutchen looked like a future Hall of Famer. He’d been baseball’s third-best player by WAR over the previous seven seasons, stretching back to his MLB debut in 2009, and ranked 46th all-time in WAR through age 28. Pittsburgh fans could see in him the reflections of a young Barry Bonds; like Bonds, McCutchen through 28 also ranked in the top quarter of major-leaguers in power, speed and patience. So it’s exceedingly rare for a player this great to suffer a season this poor, smack dab in the middle of what should be his prime:
| WAR PER 600 PLATE APPEARANCES | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PLAYER | YEAR | AGE | PREVIOUS CAREER | SEASON | FUTURE CAREER |
| Fred Lynn | 1981 | 29 | 5.3 | 0.2 | 2.7 |
| Edgar Martinez | 1993 | 30 | 5.2 | 0.7 | 4.4 |
| Andrew McCutchen | 2016 | 29 | 5.4 | 0.9 | — |
| Dave Parker | 1980 | 29 | 5.2 | 1.3 | 0.9 |
| Travis Jackson | 1932 | 28 | 5.0 | 1.7 | 1.9 |
| Joe Mauer | 2011 | 28 | 5.4 | 2.2 | 2.9 |
| Hank Greenberg | 1941 | 30 | 6.2 | 2.2 | 5.7 |
| Joey Votto | 2014 | 30 | 5.2 | 2.2 | 4.8 |
| Pete Reiser | 1948 | 29 | 5.1 | 2.3 | 2.2 |
| Arky Vaughan | 1942 | 30 | 6.1 | 2.5 | 4.3 |
| Ralph Kiner | 1953 | 30 | 5.4 | 2.5 | 2.0 |
| Frank Thomas | 1998 | 30 | 6.1 | 2.5 | 2.7 |
| Goose Goslin | 1929 | 28 | 5.0 | 2.5 | 3.1 |
| Nomar Garciaparra | 2004 | 30 | 5.5 | 2.5 | 0.5 |
| Snuffy Stirnweiss | 1948 | 29 | 5.1 | 2.7 | -0.4 |
| Andre Dawson | 1984 | 29 | 5.0 | 2.7 | 2.1 |
| Darrell Evans | 1975 | 28 | 5.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 |
| Art Devlin | 1910 | 30 | 5.3 | 2.7 | 2.2 |
| Lance Berkman | 2005 | 29 | 5.1 | 2.9 | 3.9 |
| Evan Longoria | 2014 | 28 | 6.2 | 2.9 | 4.2 |
| Joe Torre | 1969 | 28 | 5.1 | 2.9 | 3.6 |
| Joe Cronin | 1935 | 28 | 5.2 | 3.0 | 4.1 |
| Scott Rolen | 2005 | 30 | 5.6 | 3.0 | 4.0 |
| Andruw Jones | 2007 | 30 | 5.5 | 3.0 | 1.3 |
| Snuffy Stirnweiss | 1947 | 28 | 5.7 | 3.0 | 1.1 |
In baseball’s modern era, McCutchen’s unexpectedly bad 2016 season ranks as one of the most shocking single-season mid-prime declines ever. If there’s any good news, it’s that most of the players in this group did manage to recover and play at a more respectable level going forward than during their down seasons. But even so, they were typically shadows of their former selves: The average player on the list above had 5.4 WAR per 600 plate appearances before his “bad” season, against only 2.8 over the remainder of his career (and only 3.0 over the very next three seasons).
Perhaps most concerning of all is that McCutchen’s decline has come virtually across the board, in every phase of his game:
Although he’s also been slightly unlucky on balls in play, McCutchen’s numbers suggest a downturn in his underlying skill set. Even among the more fine-grained statistics, he’s hitting the ball more softly than ever and popping up more infield flies than ever. His average exit velocity is down, and he’s connecting on fewer swings than at any point in his career.
Even great players can suffer bad seasons sometimes, and it’s not unprecedented for them to recover and play well after a down year. So maybe McCutchen will bounce right back to his previous Hall of Fame form. But what we’re seeing from McCutchen now is the bad kind of history: one of the worst seasons ever to land in the middle of a great player’s prime.
