Morning pop quiz: In which of his three seasons has Andrew McCutchen had his best performance relative to the rest of the league?
Surprisingly, the answer is 2011. McCutchen’s .259/.351/.476 line is good for a 128 OPS+, which is better than his 121 in his rookie year or his 120 last year. If you’re more into the sabermetric numbers, his wOBA is .368, right in line with is rookie year, and his wRC+ is 132, a career best. That’s with only hitting for half of the season thus far. It’s because he’s absolutely on fire since his OPS bottomed out at .666 on April 28th; since then he’s hit .321/.389/.617 with five doubles, two triples, five homers, nine walks, and ten strikeouts in 20 games. He’s on fire.
After everyone heaped such high expectations on McCutchen before the season, his ugly start (he was hitting just .202 through the first 25 games when he bottomed out on April 28) drew a lot of attention. I thought even then that his walk-rate and power looked good and it was only his batting average holding him back; I’ve been saying for a couple weeks now that once he gets on track he’s suddenly going to be in the midst of a breakout year.
So here we are. McCutchen’s played in 45 games and been hitting for 20 of them and those 20 games have been enough to level his season line out to his career norms. He may not continue on the 1.000+ OPS tear that he’s been on lately, but I don’t know that he’ll slump like he did at the beginning of the year again. He’s playing the best statistical defense of his career this year and people are going to start noticing the offense very, very soon.
If you’re not on the “Andrew McCutchen 2011 Breakout” train, get on now. It’s pulling out of the station as we speak.
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