BRADENTON, Fla. -- Only three outfielders in baseball have played more games than Andrew McCutchen over the last five seasons. So when the Pittsburgh Pirates announced shortly before game time Friday that McCutchen had been scratched from the lineup with "lower body soreness," it immediately raised concerns in the team's spring training camp.
However, McCutchen told ESPN.com that those concerns aren't shared by him.
"It's just a little sore today," he said after emerging from the trainer's room before the Pirates' 8-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins. "I just told them, 'If I can't go out there and give 100 percent, I'd rather not push anything.' So they'd just rather give me the day and rest a little bit, I guess."
Neither McCutchen nor the Pirates specified the exact nature of the injury, but McCutchen said it was simply a result of easing back into baseball playing shape after not playing the game for months.
"It's crazy," he said. "You do all the training in the world to get yourself prepared for the season and spring training, and it's just a different type of activity. It's just different. In the offseason you're moving, moving, moving, lifting, lifting, exploding, exploding. And it comes easy. And then come (spring training), you're stagnant, you're not moving, you're just relaxing. And then the ball's hit and you go. ... So the body's having to adjust to the longevity of it."
McCutchen, 28, has averaged 154 games a season over the last five years. Among major-league outfielders, only Hunter Pence, Adam Jones and Ichiro Suzuki have played more games over that span than he has. Nearly half of the 38 games McCutchen has missed in that time came last season, when he had to go on the 15-day disabled list for the first time in his career with an avulsion fracture in the rib-cage area.
He has never missed an extended period of time with any type of leg, knee or foot injury, and McCutchen was confident that won't change when the season starts next month.
"Everybody gets those little minor aches and little pains here," he said. "But when the season starts up, I'll be ready to go."