Perrotto: Andrew McCutchen Has Reasons to Keep Coming Back

When I broached the subject, Andrew McCutchen was 35 years old and sitting in the visitors’ clubhouse at PNC Park.

In 2022, I asked McCutchen, who was then with the Milwaukee Brewers, how much longer he wanted to play. He gave a quick response.

“I’m not going to be one of those guys who plays until I’m 40,” he said. “I’ve got other things in life I want to do, too.”

McCutchen is now 38. And he hasn’t retired.

McCutchen re-signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday on a one-year, $5-million contract. It marks the third straight winter that the designated hitter/outfielder has agreed to the same terms, returning to the organization that selected him in the first round of the 2005 amateur draft, brought him to the big leagues four years later, and then traded him to the San Francisco Giants in 2018.

Maybe McCutchen will play past 40. He isn’t planning that far ahead.

However, the native of Fort Meade, Fla., still desires to play for the Pirates in his adopted hometown for at least one more year.

“It’s still there. I’m still excited,” McCutchen said Monday on a teleconference with reporters. “I still do get excited to see the guys, to prepare for the season and get ready and, ultimately, I think the biggest thing for me is knowing I can still compete and can still be able to produce, and I still feel like there’s a way that I can be better, and I know that it’s still in there.

“You’re always searching for it. You always feel like it’s there. You’re doing things and I feel like that once that gets lost. And once I lose that and go ‘That’s it, I think I’m good,’ that’s when you’re good. I’m getting close to that but I’m not there yet.”

I asked McCutchen during the final week of the past season when it would be time to step away.

“If I’m embarrassing myself,” he said. “I’d never want to be hanging on and not helping the team.”

McCutchen appeared in just five games in the outfield last season and stole just three bases in 120 games. Yet his 20 home runs were third on the team – behind Bryan Reynolds’ 24 and Oneil Cruz’s 21 – and McCutchen also had a .232/.328/.411 slash line.

McCutchen isn’t the same player who was the 2013 National League MVP and made five straight All-Star Game appearances from 2011-15. However, he adds production to a lineup that was 24th in runs scored last season and projects as the cleanup hitter in 2025.

The biggest thing for McCutchen is he is still having fun following a re-acclimation period with the Pirates. When McCutchen returned in 2022, no one was left on the roster from his last season in Pittsburgh five years earlier.

“It was different in the fact there were a lot of different faces, a lot of different people, you kind of feel like you’re on an island and you’re by yourself at times and that’s what it felt like in the beginning,” McCutchen said. “But baseball is a tremendous game to no matter where you’re from, you’re from all different parts of the country or you’re from different countries you find a way to play a game that we all love to play, and you communicate through that and that’s what we did.

“And it just felt like over time, it was different, but it was also the same. So, I’m happy to be around some guys and some of the same guys that I played with and us to try to do this thing again together. I like this group of guys.”

Which is why McCutchen keeps coming back – with 40 on the horizon.