PiratesFest is less than a week away. Spring training is less than a month away. And Andrew McCutchen still doesn’t have a contract.
That alone feels jarring. For so many years, McCutchen’s presence in Pittsburgh has been a constant — first as the face of a renaissance, later as the connective tissue between eras, and most recently as the heartbeat of a clubhouse still trying to remember what winning feels like. Even in seasons when the Pirates were going nowhere, there was comfort in knowing No. 22 would still be there.