Jack Suwinski and Andrew McCutchen Have Similar Issues

4-7-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

When things crop up early in a baseball season, for the most part you have time to sort them out, overcome them to a degree and that’s on the negative side, sometimes you simply have to ride out something that’s working even while it makes no sense.

That’s baseball.

Like, while it’s happening, most fans won’t care about how sustainable that .350 Average is that a player has going. Looking at how that average comes to be can help you potentially forecast out how long it might last, but while it’s going on, nah, just enjoy it. If you’re a baseball manager, you use it, even if you see the player blessing his bats with rum, cigars and Jobu.

Let’s talk about some early season stuff I’m seeing specifically with two important players.

I really want to focus on Andrew McCutchen and Jack Suwinski. Both players suffer from a very similar issue and solving their early season issues might just help determine how far this thing goes.

1. Andrew McCutchen

Andrew is struggling early on, and he’s doing it in a way he very rarely has. Now, let’s start here, Andrew missed the vast majority of Spring Training, so these numbers, while alarming, are probably at least partially the product of simply not getting is timing right.

Andrew has been an elite player in this league, but make no mistake, he’s never been great as it comes to Whiff or Strikeout Rates. Even in his MVP season he was in the 19th percentile league wide in Whiff and 47th for K rate. Everything else was so great, he was able to outshine those two low water marks in his arsenal.

Through the years, most of those categories he was elite in, he’s become either good, or even average with, and it makes those other two low points stick out even more.

Just last year, his Chase Rate (95%) and Walk Rate (99%) were elite in the league. Early on this year, he has both of those still on the same track.

Problem is, at least to start the season his Whiff rate has plummeted to 7th percentile and his K rate all the way down to 3%. A fall like this is probably not sustainable, but here’s the poop with Cutch that’s kinda scary. His Whiff rate indicates he’s swinging and missing a ton, but at the same time his Chase Rate remains in the 93rd percentile. This indicates he’s swinging and missing in the strike zone, and a ton. For obvious reasons, this is going to hurt his walk numbers too, which has become just about his best attribute recently.

People want to immediately toss around words like washed up or whatever, but these numbers don’t exactly help convince you otherwise.

Cutch is a proud veteran, and of course his MVP days are far behind him, but he can still be a productive player, so long as he finds the timing and bat speed to get that Chase Rate to regulate. He just needs it to creep back to league average or slightly below, but you really can’t just ignore it and keep plugging him into the cleanup spot either.

It’s not disrespectful to point out his decline is not only apparent, it’s statistically undeniable. He still has some more moments to deliver, and his value in the room still matters and counts for something, but it would be wonderful if he managed to get it back to a slow decline.

I like to think he will, but I’m concerned, if pitchers don’t have to get him to chase, he won’t walk, and that whiff rate makes hitting a mistake far less likely.

2. Jack Suwinski

Jack in his young career has been incredibly streaky. He goes through stretches of looking like his bat could carry the team for a few weeks and then he looks more like a guy who just shouldn’t play.

For Jack, the power is easy and prodigious, if he touches it, it’ll go. Despite what you think of Jack, there’s no denying he does some things at a very elite level.

There’s some bad in there for sure, worst among them the Whiff and K rates. As with Cutch, having an elite Chase % with low Whiff % means he’s swinging and missing in the zone. Now that was 2023, and overall, it was a productive season for Jack. A season that probably sets his floor at the platoon player level. The Pirates hope there’s more there, and throughout this season he’ll prove them right or wrong.

Here’s his start to 2024…

Clear issues all over the place right? Well, I’m here to tell you he had stretches that look just like this during 2023 and by the end of the season he’ll wind up looking a lot more like 2023 than he does now.

The question is, can he do more? I’m not sure you’ll 100% be able to answer that this year, but 2 years of the same thing, probably sells the team at least on no longer considering him a full time player.

I think that’s what 2024 is for Jack, his chance to be an every day starter into the future a bit, or to prove he needs to largely stay away from lefties.

Want a good laugh?

The Pirates have tried to hide him from lefties early on here, now check out his splits.

People, you can’t make this stuff up. If you don’t laugh you’ll cry.

It’s super early, I’m sure nobody expects the numbers to keep looking like this, but some things are true for sure. The Whiff in the zone stuff can’t continue for a guy who even decent contact could produce runs.

Big season for Jack.

Both of these players are at different ends of their career and one has already proven if he’s physically capable, he’ll produce. Knowing these numbers alone doesn’t solve it, I mean it’s not like they’re going to find out about them here and change their ways or something, the team is all over this type of stuff.

Solving them will take different things for each of them. For Cutch, I fear this might be about bat speed, it just doesn’t feel like he’s catching up to the high fastballs and since they’d be strikes if he took them, that’s a real problem. It could also be timing, which would make sense, he barely played this Spring after all.

For Jack it’s been a consistent issue, but one he tends to find his way into being productive with. He is taking a different approach this year as opposed to last year which has probably inflated his Whiff % in the zone and it’s incredibly simple. He’s actually trying to swing at those pitches on the outside corner he was just watching for a strike most of last year. In time, I think that will probably work to his advantage more than it hurts but that has yet to play out.

Either way, both of these players for one reason or another will find themselves in part time roles if they don’t at least improve here.