It is one week from today that the Pirates will open the 2026 baseball season against the New York Mets. This blog is not going to speculate on what the Pirates are going to do to construct an opening day roster. If you try to think like the Pirates, you could cause yourself brain damage. I am not going to write about what I think the Pirates should do. That would lead to too much frustration. I played 166 rounds of golf last year, so I have plenty of frustration in my life. I do not need the Pirates to add to it. This is more of a fact-finding mission about the players that the Pirates have to decide on to make the team at the start of the season.
The decision-making process got a lot stickier when the Pirates decided to sign Marcel Ozuna. Two things happened. The Pirates lost a lot of flexibility in making out a starting lineup. Ozuna can only DH. He took another spot on the opening day roster. Ozuna had an off season last year. His OPS was .756. A lot of this was blamed on a bad hip. His combined OPS for 2023 and 2024 was .915. Does he have to perform that well in 2026 to consider his acquisition a success? No, I don’t think he has to be that good. Let’s at least split the difference. If we did that, he would have an OPS of .835. If he can do that, then he will be an asset to the team even though he is a one-dimensional player. If he fails to do that, even signing him for 1 year will be considered a bust. Now let’s look at the players that he is potentially keeping off the roster.
Konnor Griffin is grabbing most of the conversation on whether or not he should make the team. Right now, the speculation is that he will start the season in AAA. The main reason given is that he has had limited AA experience and no AAA experience. The Pirates have 5 young players who have a lot of AAA experience. It is hard to say how many of these players are going to make the team. Certainly, one less player will make the team because of Ozuna. All 5 players have similar AAA resumes. They have had limited major league experience. I will give a general rating of what type of spring they have had. I am going to list them alphabetically and make no mention of the positions that they can play. All 5 can play multiple positions, at least all of the outfield positions. All the ages will be what they will turn before or during the season.
Billy Cook is 27 years old. He has had a good spring training. He had 805 plate appearances at AAA. His slash line is .264/.352/.437 for an OPS of .789
Rafael Flores is 25 years old. He has had a poor spring training. He had 206 plate appearances at AAA. His slash line is .266/.369./.422 for an OPS of .791
Jhostynxon Garcia is 23 years old. He has had a great spring training. He had 351 plate appearances at AAA. His slash line is .271/.334/.498 for an OPS of .832.
Endy Rodriguiz is 26 years old. He has had a good spring training. He had 383 plate appearances at AAA. His slash line .275/.352/.445 for an OPS of .797
Nick Yorke is 24 years old. He has had a good spring training. He had 783 plate appearances at AAA. His slash line is .307/.379/.446 for an OPS of .825.
Those are the 5 players that could possibly play at the major league level. It is a little eerie how similar their AAA stats are. Their OPS ranges from a low .789 (Cook) to a high of .832 (Garcia). There are some problems with each one of them: Cook, his age; Flores, a bad spring; Rodriguiz, injury problems; Garcia, young; Yorke, although the sample size is small, had not looked that great offensively at the major league level. At one point during the offseason, I thought all 5 players would make the 2026 Pirates. Throw Konnor Griffin into the mix and there would have been 6 young players on this Pirate roster to start the season. Of course, the Pirates could still make some moves that would change this picture.
On the pitching front, the Pirates are still in that “who will be the 5th starter” mode. I promised that this blog would try and speculate what the Pirates might do to form the final 26-man squad. I am going to stick with that even when it comes to who the Pirates choose to round out the rotation. That could encompass another trade move; who knows? In a week, we will all know. For the Pirates, the formula for success is quite easy to calculate. The Pirates were a very good defensive team last year. They were 9th in Defensive Efficiency, 11th in total errors, and 4th in what’s called Total Zone fielding. With the starting lineup for 2026, the fielding could suffer some, but I do not think that much. It all boils down to this: the Pirates have to pitch like they did last year. They have to have a league-average offense. Their fielding has to also be right around the league average. If the Pirates can do that, they will make the playoffs. A lot will be riding on what decisions management makes on the 26 players that are going to make this team. That is one scary thought.
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 