Pirates' Neal Huntington on Andrew McCutchen: 'Players come and players go'

Andrew McCutchen is as beloved by Pirates fans as Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell. However, it seems unlikely that McCutchen will match those franchise icons in one important area.

Clemente and Stargell played their whole careers with the Pirates.

“That generation of players is gone,” general manager Neal Huntington said. “The player who stays with one team for his entire career has become a rarity. I get that, (to) a fan, that's horrible. Unfortunately, now players come and players go.”

Huntington mulled trade offers for McCutchen last winter and will do so again next week during the MLB winter meetings.

Why would the Pirates deal McCutchen, who lifted the franchise out of mediocrity as he blossomed into a star in 2013? The simplest answer is money.

In the final year of his contract, McCutchen, 31, will make $14.75 million next season. With his skills in decline, the Pirates are unwilling to offer him another contract extension.

On Saturday during PiratesFest, Huntington repeatedly was asked about McCutchen's future. McCutchen is the face of the franchise, and much of the fan base wants him to stick around, just as the Steelers have kept Ben Roethlisberger and the Penguins have locked up Sidney Crosby.

“We'd love to pay the same percentage of payroll to Andrew McCutchen that the Penguins pay to Sidney Crosby. We can't,” Huntington said.

That's not quite true, though, and Huntington quickly corrected himself.

“We already pay Andrew a significantly higher percentage of our payroll than the Penguins pay to Crosby,” Huntington said. “We'd love to pay the same percentage of our payroll to Andrew that the Steelers pay to Ben Roethlisberger — we'd also love for Andrew to (account for more than) half of our offense — and we're doing that. We already pay more.”

McCutchen's salary accounted for about 14.8 percent of the Pirates' opening day payroll in 2017.

Roethlisberger is making $18.2 million, which is about 11 percent of the Steelers' $165 million payroll.

Crosby is making $10.9 million, which is about 13.8 percent of the Penguins' $79.1 million payroll.

There are salary caps in the NFL and NHL but not in MLB.

“That's different sports, different industry, but I hear that all the time: ‘Well, the Penguins keep Crosby and the Steelers keep Roethlisberger,' ” Huntington said. “Absolutely, that's apples and oranges, in terms of the finances of the games.”

Rob Biertempfel is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at rbiertempfel@tribweb.com or via Twitter @BiertempfelTrib.