Andrew McCutchen trade rumors are depressing and logical

POINT: We’re so used to the progression that we became numb years ago. Small-market team develops a star and wins. Small-market star gets expensive. Small-market team stumbles a bit. Small-market team pawns expensive star in search of the next star, who will be much cheaper. It happens, over and over again, and no one really stops to think how ghoulish it is to circle over the stinky carrion of a team’s hopes and dreams.

This one is different, though. Andrew McCutchen isn’t just some player you’ve heard of on a team that goes through the ups and downs that every franchise endures. He was the galactic herald, who rode into Pittsburgh on a silver surfboard and led them out of The Suck. If you weren’t there, it’s hard to explain The Suck, but it’s possible to quantify.

After Barry Bonds threw a baseball up the first-base line and vanished forever, the Pirates finished under .500 for 20 straight seasons. In 1997, they did a little better than expected, and the surprise and delight around the league was great enough that their general manager, Cam Bonifay, was awarded the Sporting News Executive of the Year.

The Pirates finished 79-83 that year. It was enough to get their GM an award. That’s how low the expectations were in The Suck.

During this misery, the Pirates kept getting high draft picks, as awful teams do. Chad Hermansen wasn’t the answer, and neither were Bryan Bullington, John Van Benschoten, or J.J. Davis. Before 2004, the 11th pick in the draft was historically cursed. The top three players selected in that spot were Greg Luzinski, Shane Mack, and Walt Weiss. Jeremy Hermida and Calvin Murray were on the top-10 list of the all-time greatest No. 11 selections. So, of course, the Pirates got the No. 11 pick two years in a row. That’s how it goes in The Suck.

Except one of those picks was McCutchen, a talent so pure that even the Pirates couldn’t screw him up. He didn’t confuse the team or the fans with a couple years of slow starts and rough adjustments. He was pure, gliding baseball from the moment he arrived, and it was so obvious. The Pirates had a player that made the rest of the world jealous.

They still lost, of course. Let’s not get wild, here. For four years, they had McCutchen and they were still the Pirates, and you knew what that meant: the progression described up there. Buzzards were circling, waiting for the Pirates to fail and fail again until it was clear they couldn’t keep McCutchen because they couldn’t pay him.

Then they paid him. He bought into the Pirates, and they bought into him, and he took their hand and won. He won the MVP. He won the first postseason game in 20 years. He came back the next year and won. He helped them win 98 games one year.

It wasn’t just him, of course, but McCutchen was the catalyst. He didn’t follow that tired progression in the first paragraph, and the Pirates got to enjoy him for eight years. The appropriate analogy in my personal experience was the Warriors and Steph Curry. The Warriors definitely had a timeshare with the Pirates in The Suck for all those years, and then a spark of pure joy carried them into a new era.

Except, the analogy breaks down when you realize the Pirates aren’t going to acquire Bryce Harper and Mike Trout to fill in the outfield, that the fun is finite and short-lived, that McCutchen will eventually have to go away. That new era for the Pirates was shorter and crueler than it needed to be.

That’s why this isn’t just the typical team-trades-star story. This is a team that waited 20 years for anything to cheer, enjoyed three years of postseason hopes, and are right back to the old paradigm, with one of the most popular players in franchise history almost certain to leave. Because that’s how it works when your team doesn’t command a market of six million people.

McCutchen leaving the Pirates would be a different kind of devastating. Until you’ve rolled around in The Suck, your clothes sopping wet with whatever in the heck that stuff is made out of, you wouldn’t understand.

COUNTERPOINT: Andrew McCutchen is a 30-year-old baseball player. In two years, he’ll be a free agent and 32. The Pirates should not be in the business of signing 32-year-old baseball players to long-term deals. That’s not a lucrative business, even for a big-market team.

McCutchen is a 30-year-old baseball player coming off his worst season ever. Yet, he’s an anomaly because his value was so great before that, and his contract for the next two years is so reasonable, that teams will still trip over themselves to throw prospects at the Pirates for him.

The Pirates can keep McCutchen, and if they’re disappointing next season, they can trade him later. Except right now, his value is boosted by what-ifs. What if he’s an All-Star again? What if he’s an MVP again? This season could replace the what-ifs with an oh-that’s-what. If McCutchen has another rough season, he’ll be a declining player under contract for just one more year. The Pirates will have missed their window.

They need those windows. Cheap players are how they have any chance in the first place, and the chance to exchange a 30-year-old outfielder coming off his worst season for prospects — premium, Grade-A prospects, at that — should be too great to pass up.

All those words about McCutchen leading the team out of the sickly swamp of losing and blah blah blah? Toughen up, kid. This is a business, and the Pirates can’t deal in sentimentality. This is a chance they have to take.

Here are the Pirates, then, caught between sentimentality and practicality, emotion and logic. The very idea of trading McCutchen reminds you that not all baseball teams get the same starting stake, that the sport is inherently unfair. But that’s how it’s going to have to be. Pittsburgh has it better than Montreal or Portland. They’ll have to look for those kinds of consolations.

And in the meantime, they get to watch Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco, two of the more exciting players in baseball, who will be on the Pirates for another ...

[checks watch]

... well, they’ll probably be around for some time, now. At least, you’d like to think so.

They might not have the original, though, the one who pulled them out of The Suck and made the Pirates one of the more enjoyable teams in baseball, a team that was easy to respect and hard to hate. If they want to keep going, they’ll have to make some tough decisions and uncomfortable roster moves. That’s okay. Every team has to do that, occasionally.

Not like this, though. Not like this. There’s even an argument to be made that losing with McCutchen might even be preferable to winning without him. The Pirates won’t make that argument. Because they can’t. And that makes sense.

If the Pirates trade Andrew McCutchen, it will make all the sense in the world. But that doesn’t mean you have to like it. None of us will.