I understood, when this season began, why fellow fantasy enthusiasts were scoffing at the concept of believing that Andrew McCutchen could ever return to stardom. He was coming off career lows in average and steals, and he also had fewer runs per game played and his lowest RBI total since 2010. It was like he magically got worse at everything all at once, while dealing with a not-that-bad .297 BABIP. McCutchen's infield flies, soft contact, and strikeout rate all soared while his OBP, ISO, and speed on the base path tanked. And through May, it really looked like we might be in store for more of those same relatively underwhelming numbers. McCutchen himself admitted in a really great July Fangraphs article by Eno Sarris that he had been mired in a funk he was able to break free from in a game against Dan Straily, and that it was like night and day once he got that groove back. My belief early on was that McCutchen couldn't possibly be spiraling down into fantasy irrelevance this quickly, such that I never dropped him from my Top 150 hitters rankings. I thought that something just needed to get corrected in both his psyche and his mechanics at the dish, and that it was simply a matter of when—and not if—he would. He's gone on to have a much better year than the regressionists would have ever predicted back when he was floundering in May, and Tuesday was a cathartic culmination of what he's been able to do to positively correct his season. Going 4-4, 4 R, 2 HR, 8 RBI against Baltimore yesterday saw Cutch come within a triple shy of the cycle while enjoying his first career grand slam. His season-long OPS of .849 ranks 41st in MLB, and it's worth being aware that he's got three multi-hit games in the last 10 days while outpacing his season BA and SLG (.278, .487) slightly in September with marks of .284 and .511. He's worth your time as championship week nears its midpoint; the Pirates finish their season against Washington, and McCutchen's gone .333 with three runs and two RBI against the the Nationals this year.
Now, for a scan of what the rest of the league's hitters were up to:
