Few people benefit in Pittsburgh from Starling Marte’s 80-game steroid suspension, but Andrew McCutchen could be one of them.

After McCutchen logged the first eight seasons and 10,317.1 innings of his defensive career exclusively in center field, the Pirates elected to move him — against his wishes — to right field this year. The idea? To accommodate the more able glove and fleeter feet of Marte in center field. While moving a Face of the Franchise off a position at age 30 is unusual — just a reminder that Derek Jeter never moved to second base — consider McCutchen’s four-year Defensive Runs Saved numbers: 2013 (5), 2014 (-13), 2015 (-8), 2016 (-28).

The -28 was an MLB worst last season.

The right-field experiment had worked out reasonably well early this season, even if McCutchen’s heart wasn’t into it. But that experiment is on hold now, as McCutchen receives a second — and perhaps a last — chance in center field. McCutchen seemed pleased to return there when speaking with my former employer, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

“Center field is where I need to play. It’s where I want to be at. If I’ve got to show a couple people that — show I can do what I need to do — that’s what I’m going to do.”

During his stunning age-29 season, stunning for the extent to his production collapsed, McCutchen claimed he was healthy. But teammate Gregory Polanco appeared to suggest that McCutchen actually wasn’t. “He seems faster than last year,” said Polanco. “His knee is healthy again and he’s flying.”

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This is Joe Sheehan’s’s third piece as part of his April residency at FanGraphs. A founding member of Baseball Prospectus, Joe currently publishes an eponymous Baseball Newsletter. You can find him on Twitter, as well. Read all our residency posts here.

Starling Marte has been suspended 80 games for a first violation of the Joint Drug Agreement. Per MLB, Marte tested positive for Nandrolone. He accepted the suspension, calling his actions “a mistake” without denying responsibility for the positive test. Marte will be eligible to return on July 18, when the Pirates play their 94th game of the season at home against the Brewers. Per the latest changes to the JDA, Marte will also be ineligible for the 2017 postseason.

This is a blow for a Pirates team that needed everything to go right to challenge for a playoff berth. Already playing without infielder Jung Ho Kang, whose DUI violations have left him unable to secure a visa, the loss of Marte for 80 games projects to something like a two-win hit for a team that didn’t have two wins to spare. The Pirates have moved Andrew McCutchen back to center field to cover for Marte, and Marte’s playing time will fall mostly to Adam Frazier, off to a .295/.354/.455 start while playing five positions. Jose Osuna and John Jaso should get some extra PAs in Marte’s stead as well.

On the horizon is Austin Meadows, the No. 5 prospect in baseball according to Eric Longenhagen and No. 7 prospect according to MLB.com. Meadows, though, is off to a .146/.217/.244 start at Triple-A, running his line at that level across two seasons and 191 PA to .198/.277/.407. Meadows’s prospect status is intact; it’s just not likely that he’ll be ready for the majors before Marte can return.

Since the penalties for failing tests were increased in 2015, in the wake of the not-shady-at-all Biogenesis “investigation,” 14 players have been suspended 16 times under the MLB regime. (Jenrry Mejia, the Mets relief pitcher, was dinged three times in 10 months and is serving a lifetime ban.) Half of those are pitchers, and the other half have combined for 270 home runs in more than 10,000 plate appearances, 159 of those homers by Marlon Byrd. I mention this because it’s important to remember that Starling Marte’s suspension is result of home runs. Every single suspended player over the last 13 years owes his punishment to home runs: home runs none of them hit, home runs that were misunderstood in the moment and remain poorly understood today, home runs that were nevertheless used as a pretense for an elaborate campaign that assumes all players cheat and forces them to prove otherwise.

MLB expanded by two teams in 1993, adding the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies. Offense jumped, as it always does in expansion years, from 4.1 runs per team-game to 4.6, helped by 81 games in the thin air of Denver. The strike years of 1994-95 saw an average of 4.9 runs per team-game, then 5.0 in 1996 before a dip to 4.8 in 1997. At that moment, it seemed as if the expansion effect was washing out of the player pool.

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Things were looking up for the Pirates. They’d emerged from the weekend with a sweep of the Cubs in Chicago. Jameson Taillon had pitched like a burgeoning ace. Ivan Nova had recorded more complete games than walks since joining the Pirates. The Cardinals and Cubs were scuffling. There was perhaps a sense that the Pirates’ final standing in the NL Central wasn’t predetermined.

And then they lost another star player for reasons unrelated to injury.

First it was Jung Ho Kang unable to gain entry to the country, denied a work visa due to his legal issues. And on Tuesday, MLB announced that Starling Marte has been suspended for 80 games due to a positive test for Nandrolone.

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Home runs. People love them! And people love them when they happen a bunch. Giancarlo Stanton has, during his career, hit four home runs in a row. Carlos Gonzalez has also hit four home runs in a row. It’s a crazy-good achievement, pulled off only a couple dozen times. There have been about as many such home-run streaks as there have been perfect games. Everyone loves a home-run streak or a perfect game.

Part of the appeal of something like that is the individual-accomplishment aspect. A pitcher can’t be better than perfect, and homering all the time would be the hitter equivalent. But don’t forget about the related matter of scarcity. We all also fall all over ourselves when we see something that never happens. Think about what it means for a baseball event to be rare. And I mean ultra-rare. There is so much baseball, all of the time. Every season involves an unnecessarily large number of baseball games, for even the most forgettable and pointless of rosters. Baseball is nothing but an endless series of repetitions. An endless number of opportunities for strange things to happen. As a consequence, many strange things have already happened, even several times. You’d never expect a perfect game. The overwhelming majority of us have probably watched perfect games, if maybe not all the way through.

Between Sunday and Monday, Josh Harrison batted seven times. The first two times, he grounded out. The seventh time, he grounded out. In between, he was hit, then he was hit, then he was hit, and then he was hit.

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The commissioner’s office, as we know, is interested in quickening a game that continues to slow, a trend recently revisited here by Jeff Sullivan.

While the intentional walk no longer requires four actual pitches to be thrown, while limits have been placed upon the length of instant-replay decisions, and while pitch clocks might be on their way to the major leagues after having been present in the minors for a couple years, there’s been less discussion about another pace-of-play variable currently under inspection: mound visits.

Mound visits undoubtedly slow the game. Part of the problem with regulating them, however, is that we don’t know how much (if any) value they provide for the pitchers and coaches meeting in the middle of the infield. While there must certainly be occasions when they benefit a club, does that occur often enough to warrant the frequency of the meetings?

Consider an extreme case from Monday night’s game in Pittsburgh. Talented but erratic Pirates starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow was having a rough go of it in his first start of the the season.

After he issued back-to-back walks to load the bases in the first, Ray Searage did what has been done for as long as there have been pitching coaches and struggling pitchers. He went out to have a word, to press pause, to change focus, to hopefully hit a sort of reset button with Glasnow.

Searage appeared to implore Glasnow to “Go after these guys.”

It didn’t work.

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This wasn’t a pleasant offseason for Andrew McCutchen. The face of the franchise’s availability on the trade market was well known and, at times this winter, a trade seemed inevitable. About four months ago, in an Orlando hotel, McCutchen told former teammate Michael McKenry — they were together for an event — that he thought he’d just been traded.

Stephen Nesbitt recently chronicled the experience for the Post-Gazette.

Writes Nesbitt:

McKenry says he sensed something was the matter.

“I think I just got traded to the Nationals,” McCutchen said.

McKenry blinked and sputtered back, “Well, holy schnikes.”

Of course, McCutchen was not traded to the Nationals. Perhaps he would have been had Adam Eaton not been dealt there. We’ll never know.

As if being made available in a trade weren’t a sufficient blow to the ego of the former MVP, the Pirates then asked him McCutchen to move off of center field, not only a position of some status but also the only position he had played since debuting in the majors. Imagine the Yankees publicly dangling Derek Jeter later in his career and then ask him to move off shortstop, to, say, second base. You don’t see stars treated in such a manner every day.

But for the Pirates to compete in the NL Central they must perhaps operate with cold-hearted, ruthless efficiency. And the club seemed to be in need of moving McCutchen somewhere. He posted an MLB-worst -28 Defensive Runs Saved last season as a center fielder. McCutchen has declined defensively in each year since 2013, and that decline accelerated in his shocking age-29 campaign last season.

(McCutchen was hurt by the Pirates’ shallower outfield defensive alignment, which back-fired last year when the club was unable to produce as many ground balls and shallow flies as in the past. Still, McCutchen, by the eye test and analytics, has been a liability in center field.)

On the surface, the move to right seemed curious since McCutchen’s throwing arm has long been thought to be his weakest tool. On competitive throws, McCutchen averaged 85.8 mph last season, a middling number and the lowest velocity among the Pirates’ starting outfielders. Right fielders, of course, typically require e a strong arm to reduce the number of first-to-third advancements by baserunners. Wrote former FanGraphs staffer August Fagerstrom last April after digging through some Baseball Info Solutions data:

In 97 instances where a base-runner was deemed to have an opportunity to take an extra base on a ball hit to McCutchen, the runner did so 70 times. That 72% advancement rate was the second-worst on record by a center fielder, dating back to 2006. Only Denard Span‘s 75% advancement rate in 2009 was worse.

But if the prospect of hiding declining range takes precedent over hiding below-average and declining arm strength, then right field in PNC Park is the ideal place to do it, as PNC Park has the largest left field in the game. Mike Petriello presented the case for such a move back in November.

Sure, McCutchen’s arm wouldn’t be a great fit for right, but that may matter less than you think, because PNC Park’s left-field power alley is so big (420 to the deepest part) compared to right (320 down the line, 375 in the power alley) that unlike many other fields, it’s a lot harder to play left than right. That’s a big part of why Marte, a fantastic defender, has stayed there. Either way, the average National League team allowed 73 singles to center with a man on first (i.e., potential first-to-third opportunities), and 80 to right. It’s just not that big of a difference.

After all, a strong outfield arm is nice. Being able to prevent extra-base hits — well, that’s far better. If the Pirates do want to shift McCutchen over, they may be on to something.

Petriello also noted how McCutchen is more effective going to his right, which should play in moving toward the larger space of right-center compared to down the line.

Of course, the move to right had been, until Opening Day, made only in theory and had yet to be put into practice in a regular-season game. And McCutchen received quite the test to open the season in Fenway Park’s spacious and awkward right field.

So how’s it going so far?

McCutchen passed his first test Wednesday when he recorded his first outfield assist as a right fielder, throwing out Sandy Leon on an 89 mph throw to the plate.

Now, it’s true that McCutchen also played some right field in the spring and in the World Baseball Classic, where he did make some off-the-mark throws. But his work with his arm on Wednesday — albeit against a catcher on the bases — is encouraging.

And McCutchen also made a nice catch in going back on the ball, a weakness for him as a defender in center, to rob Mitch Moreland of an extra-base hit.

And with the Pirates planning to go away from their ground-ball philosophy to a degree, as David Laurila reported — and with McCutchen likely playing a deeper relative position in the field than he did a year ago —
maybe he can bounce back defensively in a move down the spectrum.

Torii Hunter made the full time move from center to right in 2011 after declining in center. In his first two years in right field he posted +7 and +12 DRS numbers in 2011 and 2012.

Hey, McCutchen is off to a good start:

While McCutchen could still perhaps be sent to a new address at the trade deadline, depending on the Pirates’ performance, or after the season — the Pirates hold a 2018 club option — perhaps he has found a new home in the field.

We had multiple Pirates articles here at FanGraphs yesterday. Craig Edwards, for example, wrote about how Gerrit Cole’s slider went missing against the Red Sox. Travis Sawchik wrote about the embattled shift. I contributed, as well, with a piece called “Searage, Taillon, and the Pirates Upstairs“.

I’d spoken to pitching coach Ray Searage and right-hander Jameson Taillon on Monday, and the latter followed up on our conversation with a stellar effort on Wednesday night. Making his first start of the season, Taillon tossed seven scoreless frames against a potent Boston lineup. His most impressive performance came in the fifth inning. In a scoreless game, the Red Sox had put runners on second and third with none out. Taillon responded by recording consecutive strikeouts, then got Dustin Pedroia to bounce back to the mound.

I planned to follow-up with Taillon this morning to get his thoughts on the performance, particularly in regard to his sequencing. Unfortunately, this afternoon’s game was postponed early due to weather, and the Pirates clubhouse wasn’t opened to media.

Despite that disappointment, I do have follow-up Taillon content to provide. The majority of what he told me earlier in the week wasn’t included in yesterday’s article, with today in mind. Here are the highlights.

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Taillon on why he’s throwing more two-seam, and fewer four-seam, fastballs: “I kind of put pressure on myself to command my four-seam. Basically, I got a little too fine with it at times. The two-seam is just a much more aggressive mentality, and I do put guys on the ground with it. I’ll throw bad two-seams in my head — out of my hand, I think they’re bad — and I’ll still put hitters on the ground. It’s a better pitch for me.

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Jameson Taillon will be throwing a lot of two-seamers when he takes the mound tonight for the Pirates at Fenway Park. It’s become his main course of attack. According to the 25-year-old right-hander, 70% of his fastballs are now twos, and that’s the pitch he prefers to go with “in any action count.”

It fits his team’s recent philosophy. Pittsburgh pitchers have been baseball’s best ground-ball hunters, putting up MLB’s highest ground-ball rate over the past six seasons. With a modus operandi of down, down, down, they’ve lived at the bottom of the strike zone with almost religious fervor.

Expect that to change somewhat in 2017 — even for two-seam purveyors like Taillon. The Bucs aren’t suddenly all about up, up, up, but kneecaps and ankles are no longer exclusive territory. Per pitching coach Ray Searage, increased elevation is in the offing.

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There have always been those who have doubted the merits of the shift in Pittsburgh.

Back in the summer of 2013, after a Pirates’ shift was beat by a well-placed ground ball that resulted in a Texas run, A.J. Burnett exchanged words with shortstop Clint Barmes on the field and later in the dugout. Later approached by a television reporter in the clubhouse, Burnett explained, with emphasis, his frustration.

“Listen, I did not have a problem with Clint! I do not have a problem with Clint! I had a problem with the fucking shift! We play people in the wrong spot!”

Of course, that was also the season the Pirates increased their shift usage by 400%, their staff produced an MLB-record ground-ball rate, opponents hit an anemic .207 against the shift, and the club dramatically improved its defensive efficiency en route to its first winning season and playoff berth since 1992.

Despite the general success of the shift for the Pirates, there were those once again bemoaning it in Pittsburgh (where I still keep a primary residence) — in the media and the public forums — after Sandy Leon beat the shift with a well-placed bunt on Monday.

As one can see, Leon’s bunt is followed by what appears to be a rather unpleasant gaze from Gerrit Cole into the visiting dugout, ostensibly in response to the club’s positioning.

And one batter later, Andrew Benintendi was able to cover an elevated-and-in 98 mph fastball.

Said Cole to reporters afterward: “They just hit them where we weren’t.”

Indeed.

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It’s possible you haven’t had the opportunity to watch every single game over the first few days of the 2017 season. For those games you’ve missed — say, Pittsburgh against Boston on Monday — you’re likely to have glanced at the box score to see how certain players performed. In the case of that Pirates-Red Sox game, you find that Andrew Benintendi hit a homer, Rick Porcello pitched six solid innings, and that the home team won by a score of 5-3.

If you looked at the line of Pittsburgh starter Gerrit Cole, you’d see a flawed five innings, with just two strikeouts, one walk, that homer to Benintendi, and all five of Boston’s runs. That’s not how Cole wanted the season to start, but the stat line isn’t quite as bad as it would appear.

Gerrit Cole has been successful in the major leagues primarily due to a great four-seam fastball. When he complemented the fastball with increased slider usage, he started dominating. There had been some talk earlier in the spring about an increased use of the changeup, as well, but when he spoke with Travis Sawchik, Cole indicated he was prioritizing his health and returning to what made him successful.

This spring Cole is not trying to re-invent himself. He has a modest goal: a healthy season. While he’s toyed with the idea of throwing more changeups the last couple of springs, he has rarely thrown the pitch in the regular season. He says he plans on continuing to be “me,” which indicates he will lean on a fastball that has averaged 95.2 mph or better in each of his first four major-league seasons — he threw it 66.7% of the time last year in line with his career (66.5%) usage — and the slider as a put-away offering.

For Cole, being “me” would suggest a combination of heavy fastball usage with the slider for whiffs. Did he stick to that plan against Boston, though? Not so much, actually. Cole did throw that fastball roughly 70% of the time, which is right in line with his established levels. As for the non-fastball offerings, however, he actually didn’t return to the slider that had made him so successful, ultimately throwing the pitch just six times.

As for explanations, we could chalk it up to efficiency. Cole threw just 76 pitches total. Through four innings, he’d thrown just 50 pitches to 13 batters. Cole wasn’t striking batters out. If hitters were putting the ball in play early in the count, then it’s possible he just arrived in fewer situations where the slider made sense. That wasn’t the case, however.

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