For Bucs, is Cutch the right fit in right field?

We’ll probably be awash in Andrew McCutchen rumors all offseason long, wondering if and when the Pirates might move him to Los Angeles or Washington or Seattle or wherever they may find a fit. But what if that’s not the move we ought to be talking about? What if the right move is simply a few dozen feet to his left? Might the Pirates really be better off with McCutchen in right field?

We first heard rumors about this earlier in November, and on the surface, the fit is odd. Right field, after all, is generally where the strongest outfield arms end up, and McCutchen isn’t particularly known for the strength of his throwing arm. Using the Statcast™ “competitive throws” metric, McCutchen’s average of 85.8 mph was far lower than Starling Marte’s 97 mph (the best in baseball), and slightly lower than Gregory Polanco’s 86.6 mph.

Since Polanco was already playing right field (he’d be in left, with Marte in center in the proposed new configuration), and his arm isn’t much stronger (though perhaps more accurate), perhaps that shows that the team wouldn’t lose all that much from where it already stood in terms of arm strength in right field. Mostly, what it shows is that there’s a lot more to picking outfield positions than throwing arms.

McCutchen, after all, compiled -28 Defensive Runs Saved, the lowest mark in baseball, and the second-worst season any outfielder has had since 2008. There’s no way to talk around that and suggest that McCutchen had a good defensive season, but as we showed in September, there’s also evidence that a well-intentioned positioning change may have backfired on him. While the Cubs moved Dexter Fowler deeper to track down extra-base hits, helping him look better in the metrics, the Pirates pulled McCutchen in shallower, hoping to take advantage of the groundball (and short fly ball) tendencies of the Pittsburgh staff.

It didn’t work, and Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said as much to MLB.com’s Adam Berry in October:  

“As this staff played out, it didn’t match up to the same analytics off the mound that we were looking to work with the defense,” Hurdle said. “We have some thoughts moving forward on how to adjust.”

So do we. With Statcast™, we’re able to see the hang time of each batted ball, and we know how far away each fielder was from the ball’s projected landing point. (It’s …

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