THE GIANTS

finished his nine-year Pittsburgh career with 203 home runs, joining Ralph Kiner, Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente as the only players with at least 200 homers as a Pirate.

Giants closer Mark Melancon played parts of four seasons in Pittsburgh and saw first-hand how the sleekly built outfielder generated unexpected power.

“I don’t know if anybody in the game has quicker hands,’’ Melancon said. “I think just it’s that explosiveness. He’s able to produce just lightning-quick hands and feet. That nervous system is different than most, those fast-twitch muscles.”

McCutchen, 31, showed off those fast-twitch muscles on Instagram during the off-season. He posted a video clip of himself running on the treadmill at a leg-blurring 26 mph. It looks as if someone hit the fast-forward button.

Andrew McCutchen, a career center fielder, will play right field for the Giants. The 2012 Gold Glove winner pushed back when the Pirates tried to make that move.

That’s why Melancon celebrated the Giants’ trade for McCutchen by hopping on the treadmill and posting his own clip on social media. His pace, though, was the tortoise to McCutchen’s hare.

“He’s just so impressive in everything he does that I don’t even try to go down that road and fight him,’’ Melancon said.

McCutchen was a bit of a physical anomaly even as a kid. Fort Meade High School is what’s called a “middle-senior” high school, meaning it includes students from sixth grade through 12th. When he tried out for the baseball team as an eighth grader, McCutchen planned on reporting to the junior varsity squad.

Spradlin caught him first and directed him to varsity practice. “No, that guy ain’t going nowhere,’’ the coach joked. “I think he’s probably the only kid who came in middle school that never played a JV inning.”

McCutchen batted .591 as a freshman and led the county in hitting.

“To be honest, he was never bigger or stronger than anybody. It was just his skill set,’’ Spradlin said. “Here was this kid who at that time was, I don’t know, 140 pounds? But he just had this bat speed. You have 18-year-old kids who don’t know the strike zone like he did.”

By the time McCutchen was a senior, 30 to 50 scouts showed up for batting practice, arriving at 4:30 p.m. for a 7:30 game.

One day during BP, McCutchen launched one from home plate to a distant cow pasture. A scout hopped over the fence behind home plate and began stepping off the distance to see how far it went. (Spradlin thinks it was about 400 feet.)

Most impressive of all, Spradlin said, is that McCutchen never showed a trace of ego. Lorenzo and Petrina made sure of that.

“Nowadays, man, kids are just completely different,’’ Spradlin said, referring to the kid who was the 11th overall pick in the 2005 draft. “And we always talk about