Andrew McCutchen had an excellent 2014 season but fell short in the MVP voting.
Andrew McCutchen had an excellent 2014 season but fell short in the MVP voting. (USATSI)

Last season, Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen was pretty clearly the best player in the National League. He also helped the team to the postseason for the first time in two decades, which certainly helped his MVP candidacy. McCutchen won the award and received 28 of 30 first place votes.

In 2014, McCutchen finished third in the MVP voting behind Clayton Kershaw and Giancarlo Stanton. There's no shame in finishing third at all, yet the argument can be made McCutchen actually had a better season in 2014 than he did when he won the award in 2013. Pretty easily, in fact.

Let's make it nice and easy and look at McCutchen's traditional stats first. Here's a comparison of his last two seasons:

2013-14 Andrew McCutchen: Traditional Stats
Year PA AVG OBP SLG H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB K
2013 674 .317 .404 .508 185 38 5 21 84 27 10 78 101
2014 648 .314 .410 .542 172 38 6 25 83 18 3 84 115

McCutchen missed some time this past season -- remember he suffered that fractured rib after being hit by a pitch -- but had the same number of doubles as last season with more triples, home runs and walks. He also drove in essentially the same number of runs. His batting average and on-base percentage are in the same ballpark while the slugging percentages are not even close.

The only category in which McCutchen was substantially better in 2013 than 2014 is stolen bases, but 27 steals in 37 attempts works out to a 73 percent success rate. Eighteen steals in 21 attempts is a stellar 86 percent success rate. McCutchen stole more bases last year but was a far more efficient base-stealer this year.

Let's now look at some sabermetric stats that better put McCutchen's performances in context. Nothing too scary, I promise:

2013-14 Andrew McCutchen: Sabermetric Stats
Year OPS+ wRC+ BB% K% WPA BR WAR FG WAR
2013 157 155 11.6% 15.0% +4.77 7.9 8.2
2014 168 168 13.0% 17.7% +4.90 6.4 6.8

Both OPS+ and wRC+ express a player's offense relative to the league average -- while adjusting for ballpark and other factors -- with 100 being perfectly averag the e. The higher the number, the better. McCutchen was approximately 55-57 percent better than average in 2013 and 68 percent better than the rest of the league in 2014. His offensive improved -- look specifically at his on-base and slugging percentages -- while the offensive levels around MLB dropped yet again.

Strikeout and walk rates are pretty straight forward. McCutchen walked more in 2014 but he also struck out more. Those two things kind of go hand in hand though. You draw more walks by working deep counts, and when you run more deep counts you'll strike out more. That's life. McCutchen's strikeout rate was still below the 20.8 percent league average, so it's not like he was Mark Reynolds out there.

WPA, or win probability added, measures how much a player improves (or hurts) his team's chances of winning while taking the game situation into account. Double into the gap down one run in the ninth? You'll get a big boost for that. Hit the same double in the fifth inning of a 10-run game? It'll barely make a dent. McCutchen improved Pittsburgh's chances of winning more in 2014 than he did in 2013 despite coming to the plate 26 fewer times.

Both the Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs versions of WAR say 2013 McCutchen was more valuable, but that is all due to the defensive numbers. For whatever reason, the various metrics say McCutchen was solidly above-average last year but atrocious this year. His defensive ratings have been up and down his entire career in fact. It's very weird. And that's sort of the point. Defensive stats aren't nearly as reliable as offensive stats. I'm not saying the WAR numbers are wrong, just that we have to take them with a grain of salt.

Even though he did not win his second straight NL MVP award, McCutchen produced at an MVP-caliber level again this past season. He helped the Pirates get back to the postseason and that surely helped his case, though I think it might have boosted his MVP chances more last year given the team's playoff drought. I'm not saying that's fair, just that it could have happened. McCutchen was great both years and I think you could say he was even better in 2014 than he was in his MVP 2013 season.