Andrew McCutchen sees a brighter future 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.

“I hate answering questions about the future. I want to live in the present.”

It was far from the first time Andrew McCutchen had been asked about the direction of the Pirates and 2025, and for someone who will turn 38 next month and had a season end prematurely last year due to a partially torn achilles, he knows each season is special. Nothing in this game is guaranteed.

With that said, there isn’t much the Pirates can do right now other than look towards the future. They brought up a couple of Minor League standouts in Joshua Palacios and Liover Peguero Tuesday for that reason, to get a look at them before the season concludes on Sunday.

McCutchen is also the only guy in that clubhouse that knows what a playoff Pirate team looks like, and while every sign points to him returning next year, there’s an implied sense of urgency for this team to get over the hump in 2025. This year’s team will finish with a very similar record to the 2023 squad, short of the playoff aspirations the clubhouse had at the beginning of the year. The roster was bolstered at the Trade Deadline, but the Pirates slumped starting in August, taking themselves out of contention. Needless to say, the clubhouse is disappointed.

That just leaves the future. And while McCutchen may want to live in the present, the future remains unavoidable.

“I like the team that we have,” McCutchen said. “I like what we are presenting and what we are capable of. I said it in Spring Training last year, or even this year: If we can be consistent, if we can stay healthy, if we can do the small things right, we will put ourselves in a very good position to be able to win ballgames. Now, we will be able to reassess that and see what we did well and what we need to work on.”

Pirate fans are very familiar with that feeling. While the 2013-2015 playoff teams are looked back at fondly now, the ‘11 and ‘12 Pirates also competed for the first half of the year but then collapsed in August. McCutchen sees the parallel between those teams and the current ones, but perhaps not in the order one would expect.

“Last year, to me, it felt like the 2012 team,” McCutchen said. “Felt like a team that had veterans in there, had some youth in there, but we were youthful. We were in very youthful situations in how we played in games, and games that felt like they meant more than just the game itself, and how we got through those games. So, it felt a lot like the 2012 team, where it was a very talented team, but we just needed the experience to be able to help propel us throughout the year.

“Now going into this season, I felt like we were just like the team before, but just with time under all of our belts, we were capable of being able to push a little further. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”

Internal improvement is hardly an apt consolation prize for missing the postseason, but it can at least be an indicator that the team is heading in the right direction. The roster is certainly deeper than a year ago, featuring the best rookie 1-2 punch in Paul Skenes and Jared Jones, plenty more pitching in the Minor Leagues (that McCutchen is paying attention to) plus the growth of Oneil Cruz into a 20-20 player with an even higher ceiling.

There’s plenty more work to be done, though, and McCutchen has long preached the importance of doing little things right and how that wins ballgames. He sees rosters like the Mariners and Orioles and thinks, “this team isn’t far off from that.” But the Pirates have to take that step.

“It’s growing,” McCutchen said. “It’s a part of it. You came into this season with an expectation to win. You didn’t do it. So, how do we do it? What do we got to do to do that? It’s learning through it. I don’t have the answers right now, but I do know what it feels and looks like. It’s here. I really feel like it is. It’s just a matter of piecing it together and doing it.”

An improved roster is obviously a good thing, but McCutchen shared a nugget of wisdom from his former manager, Clint Hurdle: “A team can beat talent, when talent isn’t a team.”

Or, in other words, “We just got to be a team and got to learn how to play together as a team,” McCutchen said. “Once you mix all of that up in one magic potion, good things can happen.”