PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Not only did Andrew McCutchen say he wants to stay with the Pirates, he led a pregame meeting which ended in a 9-4 win Tuesday over San Diego.
McCutchen called it ‘a little talk’ but teammate Josh Palacios said it had impact with the team. It’s what he was brought here to do. We’ll get back to the team meeting, but to quell fears about him wanting to be traded.
“I’ve vocalized how I felt about being here and the reason why I came back,” McCutchen said Tuesday night. “That stance hasn’t changed. I still want to be here regardless.”
The 36-year-old then did stress it’s really out of his control. There are no, no-trade clauses in baseball. It’s not his call if the team decides to trade him. He will control what he can and he wants to be in Pittsburgh.
“I want to win here,” McCutchen said. “I want to be here. That’s what I’m going to focus on. Just gonna keep continuing to prepare and be here and us to try and do our best to go out there and win ballgames and get ourselves back in this race because we’re not far away from it. Anything can happen in this division. We all know that.”
As his reaction to the report from veteran baseball insider Jon Morosi that the Rangers were/are interested in acquiring McCutchen?
“Nothing, really,” McCutchen said. “That’s just what Twitter does, right? Twitter Twitters, right? It’s nothing. You get around this time of the season, people are going to start talking. You have to kind of take it with a grain of salt. I didn’t think much about it. We just need to do what we need to do as a whole and as a club. It’s something I don’t need to worry about.”
Pregame talk
Back to what McCutchen does for the Pirates as he currently is and wants to remain on the roster. He’s not someone who talks often, but players respect not only what he’s done in the past but what he is doing this season.
“It’s my responsibility to produce on the field first and foremost, but I also know the impact that I can have when I need to say something, to speak up,” McCutchen said. “I’m not a guy who says a whole lot, but when there comes a time, I say what I need to say, then we go from there. It’s not the first and won’t be the last. I’m going to continue to keep leading in any way that I can, by example, being vocal when I have to. Nothing crazy. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just having to speak up when you need to. I’m not going to say that was a reason we won. There was some importance to it.”
The 15-year veteran said the crux of the talk was remembering what they do as a whole, not what the individuals do. It’s about not just focusing on you, but the person behind you, especially when you get on base. What can you do to help the team?
“It’s just the whole package,” McCutchen said. “Our pitchers have been grinding away for us. It’s nice to be able to put some runs on the board tonight and not feel like if we score four or five or six, it’s not enough. Just continue to keep grinding away, and that’s what we did. That’s what we do as a whole when things are going well. We grind away every inning. We were able to do that today.”
And did that led by Andrew McCutchen and he wants to keep it that way.