Always Chance Franchise Icon's Time With Pittsburgh Pirates Would End This Way

As surprising and as stirring as Andrew McCutchen’s return to the Pittsburgh Pirates was, there was always a dark cloud hovering over the story at about 30,000 feet.

McCutchen’s reunion with the Pirates was a beautiful thing when it happened. The franchise icon returning to Pittsburgh, the city he still calls home, five years after being dealt to the San Francisco Giants in a trade that infuriated the vast majority of the team’s fans.

What made the reunion even sweeter was how it came out of the blue. It was just assumed that McCutchen, like every other player shipped out of town by the Pirates, would never return.

Yet McCutchen came back to a franchise whose last star player to leave Pittsburgh on his own terms was Willie Stargell, who retired following the 1982 season. After 40 years, the fans seemed poised to give one of their heroes a proper sendoff.

For three seasons, McCutchen was a decent hitter despite his advancing age, posting a .242/.345/.391 slash line. He certainly wasn’t at the level of the days when he won the National League MVP in 2013 and appeared in five straight All-Star Games from 2011-15. Yet McCutchen was a useful player on bad teams, even though the Pirates felt he could no longer play in the outfield and had become almost exclusively a designated hitter.

However, that cloud never stopped hovering.

There were always questions hidden in the background. What if McCutchen lost his effectiveness and Pittsburgh had to release him? What if general manager Ben Cherington constructed a roster on which McCutchen no longer fit?

It happened on Monday, when the Pirates agreed to terms with free-agent designated hitter Marcell Ozuna on a one-year, $12-million contract. Ozuna is strictly a DH, and like McCutchen, bats right-handed. In this age of 13-man pitching staffs, no team has the space to carry two DHs on their 26-man roster, especially a pair who hit from the same side of the plate.

It is hard to envision Pittsburgh re-signing the 39-year-old McCutchen now, unless it’s either for a non-playing role or to a ceremonial one-day contract that would allow him to retire as a Pirate.

Regardless of what happens, McCutchen’s place in Pirates’ history is secure. He was the driving force behind the Pirates ending a streak of 20 consecutive losing seasons in 2013, the longest stretch of futility in major North American professional team sports history. McCutchen will be inducted into the team's Hall of Fame one day and is likely to have his No. 22 retired.

Yet the odds of an unceremonious ending increased the longer McCutchen kept playing. In the end, professional sports are a business, and McCutchen reached his expiration date on Monday.

That doesn’t tarnish his legacy. It’s just the cold, hard truth of baseball.

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