If not for an elbow injury that severely limited his power in the second half of the previous season and a partial achilles rupture sustained in the first week of September, McCutchen probably would have hit his 300th home run this past season. Cutch hit 299 home runs by the end of the 2023 campaign. McCutchen will accomplish this goal next season, perhaps even before the first week of play, if he remains largely healthy.
McCutchen will be in very exclusive company whenever he hits his 300th home run. Playing at least half of their games in centre field, only 14 players have ever hit 300 or more home runs. At least eight of those players are either already in Cooperstown or will soon be. In 2020, Trout became the most recent centre fielder to reach 300 home runs.
McCutchen’s wins above replacement, according to Baseball Reference’s computation, are currently +48.6. It will only take him an additional +1.4 bWAR to achieve the +50 mark. That’s about what McCutchen has averaged in each of the previous three seasons. Although +50 bWAR may appear somewhat arbitrary, this is the point at which the players who are inducted into the Hall of Fame and those who are not begin to diverge from one another. With a bWAR of +50, just 26 players have spent more than half of their games in centre field.
or higher, with roughly 50% being honoured in the Hall of Fame. Some like Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltran, and Mike Trout will probably make it to Cooperstown eventually. With his achievement in 2017, Trout is once again the most recent CF to reach 50+ bWAR.
