While Major League Baseball, like the sporting and entertainment world at large, is on hold, Andrew McCutchen’s downtime is a little extra involved. The Philadelphia Phillies outfielder, 2013 National League MVP and five-time All Star tore the ACL in his left knee in June 2019 and has been sidelined from the game ever since. He wouldn’t have been ready to suit up for Opening Day 2020 had it taken place in late March as initially planned—but as he explains in Playboy, the extra healing time will likely allow him to resume his spot in the starting lineup whenever baseball finally returns.

The forthcoming season carries numerous story lines keenly relevant to McCutchen. For one, the Phillies will look to improve on a .500 season in 2019 that left them watching the postseason from home as the Nationals—their NL East rival and Phillies star Bryce Harper’s former team—shocked the nation by winning the World Series. Also fresh on players’ minds is the revelation that the Houston Astros stole opposing teams’ signs in recent seasons. The 33-year-old McCutchen addresses all this and more in an essay offering a window into his life during quarantine.—Ryan Gajewski

When the quarantine began, I was in the middle of rehabbing my knee. The stadium in Florida where the Phillies hold spring training is still open to the guys who are rehabbing, which is considered essential business.

I show up in the morning and warm up on a bike for about 20 minutes. Then I work with one of the trainers to mobilize my knee with their hands. After that, I’m out on the field for running, agility drills and throwing. I go inside and hit the batting cage, and then I’m in the gym and working out. That’s basically a full day, Monday through Friday.

When spring training was still going on and reporters were asking when I expected to be ready, I said Opening Day, even though I knew I wouldn’t be. It looks like I’m now actually on track to be ready for the delayed Opening Day, so I joke about that all the time with the few guys who are here. If you started a game and told me to go play in it, I could do it.

I can’t put a percentage to where I’m at right now, but I’m ready to play. I can do everything. There might be a couple of things I can’t do at 100 percent—like if I’m comparing my sprint speed now to my sprint speed before I got hurt, I wouldn’t say I’m quite there yet. But I could still go out on the baseball field, and if you hit a line drive in the gap, I know I could run it down.

I don’t see any of my teammates, just a couple trainers. There are three of us players who are working at the stadium, but we’re on different times. They’re being proactive about the virus and keeping us separated, keeping things wiped down and clean. We all have families to go back to, so staying safe is the main focus.

You’d like to think all the players are talking among themselves through these times. But it really doesn’t happen, unless there’s something super important that needs to be said to everybody, which isn’t that often. You talk to or text the handful of guys you really hang out with. If you have a group chat with more than five people, you start to get annoyed because your phone keeps vibrating, so that’s kind of where we are too.

Whenever baseball returns, I just want it to be as normal as it can possibly be, even with everything that’s going on. Whatever it takes for the game to just be the game. Let’s not worry about changes or how the roster is going to be expanded, how many games we’re going to play, how long they’ll go. I just want to play as many games as we can play and try to make it as simple as possible. Just go out and focus on the game itself.

I wouldn’t like to play in an empty stadium. I understand the safety behind that, but we like to play in front of the fans. The fans are the ones who make us feel a certain way when the stadium is full. I think back to last season, when I hit a leadoff home run on Opening Day. I’m like, “Dang, what if it’s Opening Day and I hit a leadoff home run and there are no fans in the stands?” It just wouldn’t be the same.

Everyone on our team is itching to be back—especially Bryce Harper. Bryce was having a really good spring; he had really good numbers and was looking really good. I’m sure he’s pretty fired up after last year’s World Series and is just ready like anybody else. I’m itching too, but it’s also kind of a good thing for me because of that extra time.

I definitely expect us to be a better team, considering it’s roughly the same guys with a couple of acquisitions, and they’ll only make us better. When I got traded my first time, from the Pirates to the Giants, the adjustment was a challenge. The more you do it, the easier it gets. I expect us to be a really, really good ball club—really tough lineup, just throwing up numbers.

As you can tell, there are a lot of things taking precedence over the Astros cheating scandal right now. But I don’t think too many people are going to forget about that, honestly. Especially coming from the players; players aren’t going to forget. Fans aren’t going to forget either. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience, but that’s something they’ve got to deal with—plain and simple.

As far as whether the league’s response was strong enough, you would like to think it won’t go on anymore. But if you look at history, someone, somewhere is always going to try to find a loophole. It shouldn’t be in the game, but it continues to be in the game. Performance-enhancing drugs continue to be in the game. If you’re cheating, it’s going to come out sooner or later. I’m just going to keep playing the game the way I play it, and that’s hard and clean.

Hypothetically, let’s say the season starts in June. For me, that would be a full year I haven’t played a game. That’s the longest I’ve ever gone without picking up the bat in a game. But through all that, it’s been amazing, because I get a full year of time with my family. My wife, Maria, and I get to watch both our kids grow up—including our three-month-old, Armani—without having me away for 10 days at a time like I am during the season. It’s tremendous, because these are moments I wouldn’t ever get back.

My final prediction for the season? Just this: We will have a season.

As told to Ryan Gajewski