Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports
PITTSBURGH — Andrew McCutchen has been bothered by a sore left knee since spring training and scouts who watch the Pittsburgh Pirates regularly say it is obvious that the star center fielding is being hampered by the injury.
McCutchen went 0-for-4 on Tuesday night in a 7-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds. That snapped his five-game hitting streak and dropped his batting average to .185 — 111 points below his career mark — in 25 games.
However, manager Clint Hurdle is downplaying McCutchen’s hitting woes and says the center fielder’s knee is “not a concerning area right now.”
The impact of the injury is most noticeable when McCutchen runs down the first line. One of the fastest players in the major leagues, he has been reduced to jogging most of the game.
Hurdle, though, says that is the result of McCutchen trying to preserve himself.
“We’ve all grown so accustomed to that man getting out of that box and that helmet coming off and those dreads flying down the line when he’s been healthy,” Hurdle said. “I think he’s trying to make sure that he’s got everything he needs when he plays defense, he’s got what he needs when he gets on base.
“Not that he’s not going to run balls out hard, but he’s just going to try and use some type of monitoring of that ability to run hard when he has to in a smarter fashion than he has ever had to before.”
Hurdle pointed to the Pirates’ three-game series at St Louis last weekend — when they were swept by the Cardinals, with all three losses coming in extra innings — as proof that McCutchen still has a burst when he needs it.
“I just thought he put in the most athletic performance he has in the outfield the weekend in St. Louis,” Hurdle said. “The way he ran in Chicago (last week), even when it was cold. We got our best times, when he was pressed to get down the line, needed to get down the line, we got our best times on him.”
