Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen, sighniong autographs here, says he uis looking firward to the arrival of his first child and is not going to worry about the Pirates' future plans for him.

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Pirates will spend the next two months trying to figure out whether centerfielder Andrew McCutchen is part of their plans in 2018. Don’t expect the five-time All-Star to monitor the situation on Twitter, which is how he found out the Pirates aggressively explored trading him last winter.

McCutchen’s got bigger things on his mind.

“I’ll just be waiting for this baby,” said McCutchen, whose wife Maria is expecting the couple’s first child in early December.

Good idea considering the only franchise the 2013 NL MVP has ever known will grapple with weighty questions following a second straight losing season.

The glow from Pittsburgh’s run of three consecutive playoff berths from 2013-15 has faded. The Pirates are 153-170-1 since getting shut out by Jake Arrieta and the Chicago Cubs in the 2015 wild-card round, including a 75-87 mark this season, the club’s worst since manager Clint Hurdle’s first season on the job in 2011.

Asked if the club is in a better place now than it was a year ago, the player most responsible for baseball’s renaissance in Pittsburgh shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know,” McCutchen said. “It’s a tough question to answer, considering we’ve had a lot of movement this year. Being in a better place? I don’t know. If you look at the record, I don’t know if we’re in a better place.”

Pittsburgh holds a $14.75 million club option for McCutchen next season, the final in a deal he signed in 2012 that became one of the biggest bargains in the major leagues. It’s highly unlikely the Pirates are able to keep McCutchen once he hits the open market a year from now, meaning they must decide whether to make a one last run with him in 2018 or try to move him for a prospect and/or a proven major leaguer.

General manager Neal Huntington said the Pirates’ best chance to make up ground in the NL Central is with McCutchen — who hit .279 with 28 home runs and 88 RBIs — patrolling center. Maybe, but it might not make long-term sense for a club ever conscious of the bottom line, flipping McCutchen for a quality player (or two) under “team control” beyond next September could be the more pragmatic approach.

Power outage

Pittsburgh’s slim margin for error was dealt a pair of massive blows before 2017 really got going. Third baseman Jung Ho Kang never made his way back to the U.S. following a DUI conviction in his native South Korea and outfielder Starling Marte was hit with an 80-game suspension after testing positive for steroids in April. Rather than address the losses, the Pirates opted to put together a patched together lineup that ended up finishing 13th or worse in the National League in batting average (.244), home runs (151) and runs (668). The Pirates are hopeful Kang will be cleared return in 2018.

Baby arms

The team banked heavily on young pitchers to shore up the back end of the rotation. Jameson Taillon, Trevor Williams and Chad Kuhl all made at least 25 starts, with all three finishing with ERAs below 4.50. Not nearly enough to make up for an offense that dipped into prolonged slumps.