There’s a correlation between cost and expectation. The higher the cost, the greater the expectation. When you dish out hundreds of dollars on the Swoosh, you expect the Nike experience.

If you shop at the swap meet, you know full well that you may end up with Mike’s. Or at least you should.

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Last year, fantasy baseball players were using, on average, the 15th overall pick to select Andrew McCutchen. And with good reason. He had been a machine for six and a half years.

You could pencil in 150+ games, 650+ plate appearances, 20+ home runs, 20+ stolen bases, 90+ runs and 90+ RBI. All with a high batting average and excellent plate discipline. Then, 2016 played out, and McCutchen ended up as the 160th overall player on ESPN’s Player Rater. Ouch.

So, what happened? There are two events that I can key on to try and explain the “demise” of McCutchen.

The first is the knee inflammation suffered in Spring Training of 2015. I know that’s two years ago, but that is when some noticeable changes began to surface. FoxSports.com wrote an article back in May of 2015 that highlighted some differences in McCutchen’s swing from the previous season.

Basically, he wasn’t transferring as much weight to the front leg, which happened to be the one with the knee issue. To be fair, McCutchen did end up playing 157 games that year, hit 23 home runs and finished the year strong after the slow start. He only stole 11 bases, though.

McCutchen has said that the knee is fine and the Pirates have not revealed anything relating to it, so it’s all circumstantial. With that said, McCutchen only stole six bases in 2016. Now, the Pirates are moving him from center field to right field on defense.

If the knee is an issue, it’s not a major one because he hasn’t needed surgery and has been able to play through it. That may make it a worse scenario, though, because it may creep up at any time or be a chronic thing that he has to deal with daily. If that’s the case, then it could cause mechanical tweaks to his swing, as referenced in the above article.

The second event occurred on June 3, 2016. During that game, McCutchen suffered a thumb injury that caused him to exit the game.

Here’s the thing, though. In the post-game interview, McCutchen said, “It’s something I’ve been dealing with for a while.” Since it’s not known exactly when that injury occurred, it’s possible that could explain the slow start to the 2016 season.

When researching for this piece, the plate discipline numbers were pretty much in line. It was in the batted ball numbers where I found some discrepancies. The three that stood out to me were the hard contact rate going down 4%, the pull rate going up 5% and the infield fly ball rate going up a whopping 6%.

When looking at the heat maps for pitches thrown and pitches swung at, I noticed that the number of pitches thrown high and tight didn’t change substantially, but the percentage of pitches that McCutchen swung at did. That helped explain the increase in pop-ups, but something was missing. The aforementioned post-game interview tied everything together when McCutchen said, “Repeatedly balls that have been in and I’ve been getting jammed on have been irritating my thumb…I guess I need to tell myself to get the bat head out on time so I can get the barrel to the ball where I’m not getting jammed.”

In essence, he had to make an adjustment to speed up his bat so that he wouldn’t experience pain. No wonder he struggled.

Now let’s take a look at his numbers from the beginning of August to the end of the season, which would have given him a full month for his thumb to heal. .284 average with a 13.9% walk rate and 14.8% strikeout rate. Compare that to the pre-injury date of June 3 when he hit .241 with an 8.1% walk rate and 24.8% strikeout rate. Also, the hard contact rate went from 33% to 40%, and the soft contact rate went from 22% to 15%.

He swung at fewer of the pitches high and tight and low and away. Interestingly, the infield fly ball rate did increase from 11.5% to 14.5%. For some reason, McCutchen almost doubled the number of pitches he swung at belt-high on the outside of the plate.

That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the increased infield fly ball rate. I will have to look into that more deeply.

With that said, the final two months of last season looked like vintage McCutchen. Without the stolen bases. Steamer has McCutchen projected for a .280/.375/.474 slash line with 21 home runs, 82 runs, 80 RBI and eight stolen bases, with a 0.60 BB/K. Those are fair projections, but I do think the BB/K will be closer to 0.70 and the days of McCutchen stealing bases are pretty much over.

ECR has McCutchen as the 18th outfielder and 55th overall player. He’s currently being drafted as the 19th outfielder and 59th overall player.

If you think McCutchen is 100% healthy, you’re getting him at a bargain. Personally, I have my doubts, which limits the ceiling and increases the risk for me. I’d much rather draft Gregory Polanco, who’s going seven picks after McCutchen, and provides a higher ceiling in my opinion.

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Stan Son is a featured writer at FantasyPros. To read more from Stan, check out his archive and follow him @Stan_Son.