lots of things about this broken franchise that are really complex and layered and when it comes to

potential solutions yikes i mean it's just way too deep to delve into in a single episode.

But I'll tell you one thing. I've got one really simple solution for one potential problem.

Good morning to you. Good. Thursday morning. I'm Dayon Kovach of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

This is Daily

Shot of Pirates. Comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and

or hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this.

Andrew McCutcheon in the 2025 season was the pirate's second most productive hitter.

You can call that, damning him with faint praise, but you can't call it anything other than a fact.

How do you measure productivity as a hitter? I go with OPS.

Catch all stat. For anybody who doesn't know what it stands for, it's on base plus slugging

percentage. So you factor in his walks, and he had 67 of those more than anybody on the team.

You factor in his hits. He had 114 of those, second most. You factor in power. That's where the

slugging comes in. He had 13 home runs, thirdmost,

on the team. And relative to the two guys ahead of him, on that home run list, O'Neill

Cruz had 20, Brian Reynolds had 16, those guys had, in order, 174 and 173 strikeouts, Kutch had 118.

Now, again, I'm not suggesting that he had a spectacular MVP-level

Kutch from a decade ago kind of season, and neither would he.

He and I talked about the season he was having as it was happening.

He felt he was doing some good things.

He felt he wasn't getting the results that he wanted at times.

He felt like he was really tearing into the ball for long stretches and wouldn't be rewarded for it.

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