The Pirates 2026 season begins Thursday afternoon at Citi Field and missing from their lineup and roster will be the greatest Pirates player of my lifetime—Andrew McCutchen. Instead, McCutchen will be in Philadelphia getting ready to help the Rangers try and defeat the Phillies on Opening Day. After welcoming Cutch back with open arms in 2023 following a five-year absence and bringing him back again in ’24 and last season, how did we end up here?
During the past three seasons, it seemed like Cutch had a lifetime contract to play for the Bucs as long as he wanted to keep playing. This was number 22 we’re talking about. Cutch, Mr. Pittsburgh, the M.V.P., Uncle Larry, the man named his son Steel for crying out loud! He was supposed to play here forever, make another postseason in Pittsburgh, win a World Series title and retire a Pirate. But that’s not the ending we’re getting…at least not currently.
This isn’t going to be your ode to Cutch kind of article. Neil already wrote that here weeks ago. Cutch was awesome, I think we all know that. I want to write about why we’re starting this season without him in the black and gold. With McCutchen signing a minor league deal with the Rangers and was just announced he made their team out of camp, I wanted to write about what I think went down this offseason now that this saga is over for now. What happened? Who’s really at fault here? And why is Cutch not at least on the Pirates bench when the team is rostering Billy Cook and Nick Yorke.
The Pirates signed Cutch the past three off-seasons to one-year deals for $5.0 million. I think it’s important to note that here because while McCutchen was still productive the past three seasons for the Bucs, his performance did not really warrant $5M anymore. His bWAR was 1.4 in ’23 then dropped to 0.9 in ’24 and decreased further to 0.1 bWAR last season. Cutch’s OPS+ fell below 100 (95) for the first time since ’22 and for just the second season of his incredible 17-year career.
I don’t believe the Pirates believed Cutch was worth $5M anymore and they didn’t want to pay him that again. I can’t speak on when the two parties talked this offseason, we heard some reports that he met with Bob Nutting toward the later part of the offseason and BC talked briefly on it during his Q&A with fans at PiratesFest in January, but good luck deciphering his word salad. The bottom line is we just don’t know what all went down so a lot of this is my own opinion of what went down.
If McCutchen thought that the one-year/$5 million deal was an auto recurring offer as long as he wanted to keep playing, the Pirates likely balked at that and their could have been some hurt feelings there. As the offseason continued on, it became more apparent that the Pirates may not want him back and Cutch scrambled for a deal to try and get on a Major League roster to where he ended up taking a minor league deal. Cutch balled out in camp going 8-for-19 with a home run and 7 RBIs and made the team. His salary with Texas is a base $1.25M and he can double that amount via incentives per MLB Trade Rumors.
Maybe the Pirates told him early on in the offseason that they’d bring him back, but it’d be at two or three million and Cutch balked at that at the time? Because I think most Pirates fans would rather have Cutch on the roster at $2M than Billy Cook.
So that’s scenario number one of what could have happened. Cutch thinks the 1/$5M is a given, the Pirates say not really, hurt feelings ensue and the Pirates move on, add Marcell Ozuna and Cutch sees the writing on the wall and scrambles for any deal he can find because he clearly wants to still play baseball this season.
Scenario number two for how this offseason went down is basically the Pirates front office strung Cutch on for most of it, telling him “Hey we want you back, but we’re working on some other parts of the team right now, we’ll get back to you” and then never really did. They decided after striking out trying to add a third baseman that their last move to add more power to the lineup was to sign Ozuna to play DH, effectively ending Cutch’s time in Pittsburgh.
In my head it just makes sense that Ben called Cutch up early in the offseason and laid everything out on the table: Cutch wants to come back, the team does or doesn’t want him back and then they either work on a deal then or move on. Hey if the Pirates truly didn’t feel like Cutch was worth $5M or whatever that amount was and they wanted to move on and try to get better players at this point of the team’s trajectory then so be it, but say that! Be up front with Cutch and lay it all out for him, he definitely deserved that much. But that didn’t really seem to happen. Did a meeting or a call even take place? Because if the Pirates had told him all that early on, Cutch wouldn’t have waited around, tweeting about how he can still play defense and getting his farewell walk around the field and he would have found a deal with another team earlier this offseason. And as the offseason stretched on with no deal and no news really whatsoever between the two camps, Cutch went to Twitter to basically subtweet the Pirates.
The split kinda ended ugly, folks and that’s what is disappointing to me. Obviously I always want McCutchen in a Pirates uniform but the way it played out this offseason is sad. What’s sad and bittersweet is the Pirates finally put together an impressive offseason to improve the team and hopefully compete for a playoff spot, but it seems to have come at the cost of 22. I believe both sides are ultimately at fault—the Pirates for stringing along their franchise altering player at the end of his career and Cutch for not going to Cherington or Nutting with his concerns, and instead aired the dirty laundry to an extent on Twitter for everyone to see (Cutch has since deleted those tweets, but fans all saw them).
Now the season begins and Cutch will once again be wearing another team’s colors, the sixth different team of his career. Cutch raked in a small sample size this spring, and I hope he continues to rake and puts up a nice season. And who knows, maybe the book isn’t closed yet on this story. Maybe there’s one more hero’s return in there at the 11th hour and we’ll see Cutch with the Pirates once again. Never say never especially with Cutch still dead set on playing baseball. He clearly feels he still has something left and wants to prove it. And with his determination and talent, I wouldn’t bet against that man.
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