The Pittsburgh Pirates made some national headlines Monday by signing former Atlanta Braves designated hitter Marcell Ozuna to a one-year, $12 million contract.
Even before that acquisition, The Athletic’s Jim Bowden recently released his grades for how Major League Baseball organizations performed this offseason.
The former Cincinnati Reds general manager gave the Pirates an “A-minus.”
“The Pirates finally did it,” Bowden wrote. “They were aggressive with their efforts to improve their offense, highlighted by the trades for second baseman Brandon Lowe and outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia and the signing of first baseman/outfielder/DH Ryan O’Hearn. They have one of the best young starting rotations in MLB and now — finally — have a chance to score some runs for them. They also have the best prospect in baseball — shortstop Konnor Griffin — waiting in the wings. Griffin is only 19, but he could make the Opening Day roster or debut before the All-Star break. He could be the key as to whether the Pirates are pretenders or contenders.”
Wow! High praise. So what did an A-minus grade from Bowden result in for the Pirates when it came to his 2026 divisional predictions?
Fourth place in the National League Central.
Yikes! So I guess that A-minus was graded on a pretty steep curve, huh?
I mean, I needed to have a few curves in grading from time to time in math and science classes. But there are curves … and then there’s Sandy Koufax.
Last year, the N.L. Central’s fourth-place team (St. Louis) had 78 wins. That’s a low bar to achieve if we are talking about “A-minus” level improvement. The Pirates themselves had 71 in last place.
So I guess that tells us what Bowden really thought of the Pirates’ roster before they added the likes of Lowe, O’Hearn and Garcia.
Now, with Ozuna, I wonder how he might regrade the Bucs. All the way up to an A-plus and a .500 record in the third place, maybe?
If it sounds like I’m ripping Bowden, I’m not. For the most part, I agree with the greater picture of the Pirates that he is painting. With Ozuna in the fold, put me at a “B-plus” for a Pirates offseason grade, and I’ll say the improved offense buys them 10 more wins.
That’s a significant, applaudable leap. That’s 81-81. That’s .500. That’s a mark the Pirates haven’t attained since 2018. Honestly, with that win total — based on last year’s standings — the Pirates would be in wild-card contention, even if they were just a fourth-place team.
But it only took 83 wins from third-place Cincinnati to make the postseason a year ago. We’re talking about one extra win every other month to exceed that total from my original prediction. That’s attainable.
Sure, I’m doing the same thing that Bowden is. We’re both giving out A-minus and B-plus grades simply because the Pirates went out and acquired “B” level players. That said, as an organization, Pittsburgh has been so lethargic in recent offseasons that they haven’t even bothered to do that.
So we are both essentially, you know, givin’ a little somethin’ for the effort, you know.
How much of that “effort” was truly put forth when they were allegedly trying to land more high-profile players such as Kyle Schwarber, Josh Naylor, Framber Valdez, Kazuma Okamoto and Eugenio Suárez?
Well, let’s just say they definitely put forth a lot of effort getting us to believe they were trying. I’ll leave it at that.
But in this city, with this franchise, that owner and a decade’s worth of non-playoff results, it doesn’t take much to get us intrigued. Frankly, it’s newsworthy that the national baseball types are struggling to remind themselves to keep the Pirates in the mix when they are making phone calls about available players this offseason.
It’s a whole new world that may at least bring somewhat different results — at least in the “run” and “hit” columns in the scorebook.
If those numbers increase the way they should from last year compared to the discount-rack offense the Pirates put forth in 2025, the grades will eventually take care of themselves.
Forget “A-minus” or “B-plus.” Let’s go “pass/fail.” If barely above .500 and a playoff spot are the cut lines for passing, I no longer have to squint as hard to see the Pirates doing so in 2026.
