Is McCutchen Littlefield's Next Victim?

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Over the July 4th weekend, I went down and checked out Andrew McCutchen playing in a GCL game in Bradenton. At the field, I met Lastings Milledge's dad and we sat and chewed baseball for quite some time while watching the game.

The more Andrew played, the more it became obvious he was hurt because I watched him grimace several times playing CF. So I whipped out the camera and recorded some of his playing time, including the video above.

Mr. Milledge swore it looked like he had a right heel problem. Evidently, heel problems are common in the farm because some teams use 'Nike' shoes that don't protect the heel as well when landing on bases, according to the rumors I heard.

But then I saw Cutch massage his hammy area after running out a hit. I then knew he had more problems than just a heel issue.

Mr. Milledge shared a little inside info that Cutch has had leg injury problems. I researched it the best I could and found this article: read it here. Sure enough, the Pirates drafted him knowing:

"McCutchen had to undergo reconstructive surgery on the knee and flirted with the possibility of never playing any sport ever again."

Less than a week later, Cutch was on the bench. Joe Rutter at the Tribune mentioned on the 17th that Cutch had missed a few games due to a "left oblique strain". (Sound familiar? Some examples: Jose Castillo last year was out nearly the entire month of April and a few days in May... Cota was out in 2004 and missed most of April 2005.. Ward missed about a week in March last year.. all with oblique strains.)

Andrew was back on the field again playing the next week and, of course, didn't do too well for about another 10 days, then started ripping again.

Flash back to draft days and McCutchen's scouting report at Baseball America.. Cutch was ranked as the second highest high school player 'closest to the majors'.

The Pirates have vehemently stated they would move Cutch no more than one level per year. However, in just 3.5 months, Cutch played in two leagues - GCL and NYPL and 27% of all the games he played last year were in the higher league.

Flash forward to 2006 where Dave Littlefield announced that Cutch has been invited to participate in 2006 Spring Training.

When Brian Graham was hired as Director of Player Development, David Littlefield stressed a new organizational philosophy: a player generally moves a maximum of one level per year. To that end, Graham said this:

"When the time comes, I'd like a player to go up and compete as opposed to going up and trying to survive," he said."

As we know now, that hasn't happened -- Jose Castillo, Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, Ryan Doumit, J J Davis, Mike Gonzalez, Ian Snell, Dave Williams, Bryan Bullington, Sean Burnett, and John Van Benschoten were all rushed to the bigs under Graham and Littlefield. Five of those eight pitchers had surgery, Doumit and Castillo have had a rash of injuries, and Gonzalez's knee has placed him on the DL quite a bit.

That doesn't seem to be a good record of player development as few have survived the rush.

McCutchen's contract specifically states he has the right to start participating in spring training in 2007.. not 2006. Pirate fans don't want Jim Tracy to see Cutch.. we don't even want Tracy to even know Cutch exists. In fact, we pray Brian Graham simply puts Cutch on auto-pilot and delivers him to the bigs in September 2008, and not a minute sooner.

The writing seems to be on the wall. Will the Pirate organization declare McCutchen ready to take over CF in 2007 in an attempt to bolster ticket sales?

Littlefield said this in early 2002:

"Scouting and player development is the way to go," Littlefield said. "It's just a more efficient way to get things done in the market we're in. I don't see that there's any magic going on in any other organizations. We have to be more efficient. We have to make good decisions."

Considering Littlefield halted advance scouting and more and more players are being rushed each year, we can only hope David Littlefield doesn't make Andrew McCutchen his next victim.