McCutchen wants to change wild-card format
BRADENTON, Fla. — Andrew McCutchen isn’t a union activist by any means.
However, there is one thing the Pirates star center fielder would like to see as a negotiation point when the Major League Baseball Players Association and owners begin talks on a new collective bargaining agreement.
McCutchen is hopeful the one-game, winner-take-all wild-card format in the postseason will be changed to a best-of-3 series format. He will get a chance to express his viewpoint Friday to MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, who will visit the Pirates on his annual tour of spring training camps.
The CBA expires Dec. 1 and Commissioner Rob Manfred said last week that talks are likely to start sometime in the nearly future.
“I’m not going to necessarily lobby the union for it, but I think it would be much more fair,” McCutchen said.
It is easy to understand McCuthen’s feelings on the matter.
After beating the Cincinnati Reds in the 2013 wild-card game, the Pirates have lost in the same round each of the last two seasons and been shut out both times — by the San Francisco Giants’ Madison Bumgarner in 2014 and the Chicago Cubs’ Jake Arrieta in 2015.
Going one-and-done in the playoffs has been hard for McCutchen and the Pirates to swallow. Even more so last year when their 98-64 record was the second-best in the major leagues behind the St. Louis Cardinals, who won the National League Central by two games over the Pirates with a 100-62 mark, while the Cubs were third at 97-65.
“You run into a hot pitcher who has his best stuff and your season is over in one night,” McCutchen said. “It really stings. You play all season to get to the playoffs and it doesn’t seem quite fair that you have no margin for error. It was hard to watch the rest of the playoffs (last year). We had big dreams.”
Indeed, the Pirates had legitimate hopes of making their first World Series appearance since beating the Baltimore Orioles in 1979.
The 36-year absence between NL pennants is the longest in franchise history, surpassing the 33-year drought between winning in 1927 and 1960.
The Pirates’ path to the World Series appears more difficult this season after the Cubs made a big splash in the offseason by signing center fielder Jason Heyward, second baseman Ben Zobrist and right-hander John Lackey in free agent. The Cardinals should again be formidable despite the Cubs raiding them of Heyward and Lackey.
However, McCutchen isn’t ready to concede anything.
“We have a good team, too,” McCutchen said. “We play hard every day and we’ve got a good group of guys in this clubhouse that play well as a team and want to win very badly.”