Cutch reaches rare career milestone

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PITTSBURGH -- Andrew McCutchen has an opportunity to reach several milestones in the coming months. On Sunday, he knocked off the first of potentially several impressive feats.

With a walk in the bottom of the eighth inning on Sunday against the Blue Jays, McCutchen drew the 1,000th free pass of his career, joining Joey Votto, Miguel Cabrera and teammate Carlos Santana as the only other active players to achieve the feat.

“Number one, it’s not easy. Number two, the fact that you maintain an approach for that long and that consistently [is impressive],” said manager Derek Shelton. “What I mean by that is, later in a guy’s career -- and don’t tell him I said later in his career -- guys have a tendency to want to get hits. They want to chase hits.

“One of the things that’s been impressive for Cutch for me, not only this year, but going back the last couple years is he doesn’t chase hits. If he thinks he can swing at pitches and impact them, he swings at them. If not, he takes his walks. You don’t see that with guys that get later in their career, because they’re starting to chase hits. He has not done that, and that’s impressive.”

To Shelton, the quality of McCutchen and Santana’s disciplined plate appearances have rubbed off on two players in particular: Jack Suwinski and Rodolfo Castro. Suwinski (137 OPS+) and Castro (120 OPS+) have both taken jumps offensively thus far, and their increased production has been due in part to their improved discipline.

In 2022, Suwinski and Castro had a O-Swing% (the percentage of pitches that a player swings at outside of the zone) of 27.4% and 28.5%, respectively. So far this season, Suwinski and Castro have an O-Swing% of 19.2% and 22.0%.

“I think it’s really awesome to watch [McCutchen] on a daily basis,” Suwinski said. “He’s one of the superstars of the game. I watched him growing up, and to see him and his at-bats every day is pretty special. I like to watch other hitters hit and see what they do. One of the things that really stands out to me is how quiet he is at the plate and his ability to make really quiet takes, but in the same way, he could still pull that trigger really aggressively.”

McCutchen isn’t in the hit-chasing business, but the 36-year-old is on the precipice of a couple other milestones as well, and currently boasts 1,973 hits, 397 doubles and 293 home runs in his illustrious career.