Andrew McCutchen resumes role as leadoff hitter for Pirates

This story was excerpted from Alex Stumpf’s Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

PITTSBURGH — Coming into the season, the Pirates planned on Oneil Cruz being their regular leadoff hitter, at least against right-handed starters. That hasn’t exactly gone as planned, as the team’s young shortstop was dropped in the order this week amid his early season slump.

Replacing Cruz up top for now is a very familiar face: Andrew McCutchen. The 16-year vet started his career as the team’s leadoff hitter and was used in that spot 22 times last season.

If the Pirates were looking for a spark in the first, McCutchen has certainly provided it, hitting leadoff homers in back-to-back games Monday and Tuesday. He’s the first Pirate to do that since Adam Frazier on Sept. 1 and 3, 2019, and with those homers, he now has 12 leadoff blasts in his career, second in franchise history behind Barry Bonds.

Heading into Monday’s game, the Pirates’ offense had been in a rut and the team had lost six straight games. A couple of leadoff homers can help right the ship quickly.

The leadoff spot was a hole last year that needed to be filled. In 2023, the Bucs’ first hitters in the lineup combined for a .308 on-base percentage, the fifth-lowest mark in the Majors, and their .689 OPS was the sixth lowest. Cruz was the first choice, and the door is still very much open for him to return, with manager Derek Shelton dropping him to the lower-third for now to take some pressure off of him.

Shelton has other options, namely Connor Joe (who usually bats first when a left-hander starts) and Edward Olivares (who is off to a hot start thanks to some mechanical tweaks). But there’s a reason why the skipper went to McCutchen.

“We’re just kinda mixing and matching a little bit,” Shelton said Monday. “I think the biggest thing is [that] Cutch can handle it. The conversation with him was like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna mix it up a little bit today and you’re gonna hit up there.’ I thought he had his two best swings in a long time [on Sunday]. And we all know he can control the zone and he can control at-bats. Right now, when you’re going through a tough stretch offensively, it’s nice to have that veteran up there that’s gonna be able to control it a little bit.”

When asked about McCutchen’s two home runs and five hits in his two games batting first, Shelton joked Tuesday, “Yeah, I would say so far it’s worked out OK.”

If the goal of the leadoff hitter is solely to get on base, McCutchen has a good toolset to do just that. He has chased at just 19% of pitches outside of the zone, putting him in the 93rd percentile of hitters. While he has whiffed more than usual to start the year, when he makes contact, it’s usually quality (46.2% hard-hit rate, 15.4% barrel rate). He doesn’t have to be completely reliant on getting walks, but he still earns more than his fair share of free passes (10.3% walk rate).

Those are the traits people hope Cruz can continue to develop in the Majors. McCutchen has been a vocal supporter of Cruz in his second stint with the Pirates, and the two had a private talk before Monday’s game, a day after Cruz admitted to having a bit of a crisis in confidence. Cruz would go on to have three hits and two RBIs that game.

“We know what he’s capable of doing,” McCutchen said. “Sometimes, we just get — as people and probably even as fans — a little ahead of ourselves because we know that he’s a special talent and you see the potential of what he can do. But sometimes you just got to be patient with him.”

McCutchen personally stakes no claim to a particular spot in the lineup. He’ll hit where Shelton tells him to. If he gets booted out of the leadoff spot moving forward, it’s probably because Cruz is clicking, and that will be welcome news.