Pirates Interested In Marcell Ozuna

Having missed out on several higher-profile big bats, the Pirates are showing some interest in veteran designated hitter Marcell Ozuna, per Katie Woo and Will Sammon of The Athletic. There’s no indication anything is close to fruition at the moment, but it’s notable in that the Bucs are the first team prominently connected to Ozuna all winter.

Ozuna, who turned 35 in November, turned in a down showing by his standards in 2025 but was still a better-than-average offensive performer overall. He hit .232/.355/.400 with a career-high 15.9% walk rate, a 24.3% strikeout rate, 21 homers and 19 doubles in 592 turns at the plate with Atlanta in the final season of his six-year run there. Ozuna raced out to a scorching start in April and May, was one of the league’s worst hitters in June, and then settled in as a slightly above-average hitter for the season’s final three months.

While he’d be a clear upgrade to the team’s run-production capabilities, Ozuna isn’t exactly a clean fit in Pittsburgh. Beyond the fact that PNC Park is perhaps the worst environment in MLB for right-handed power, the Buccos’ roster isn’t well constructed to accommodate an everyday designated hitter. Spencer Horwitz and Ryan O’Hearn are lined up to share time at first base and designated hitter. Horwitz, after a slow start to his season in 2025, finished the year out on a blistering .314/.402/.539 tear in his final two-plus months of play. He’s locked into an everyday role. O’Hearn can play in the outfield corners, but Bryan Reynolds has one of those two spots locked down.

Signing Ozuna would push O’Hearn into a primary outfield role. He’s graded out as a quality first baseman in recent seasons with Baltimore but has below-average grades in the outfield corners. Slotting O’Hearn into left field with any sort of regularity could also cut into playing time for fleet-footed Jake Mangum and serve as a roadblock for top prospect Jhostynxon Garcia to push his way onto the big league roster; the Pirates acquired Garcia earlier this winter in the trade sending righty Johan Oviedo to Boston.

Of course, there’s an argument to be made that the perennially punchless Pirates ought to be willing to sacrifice some defense in the name of adding thump to the lineup. Pittsburgh’s pitching staff is the backbone of the roster, with Paul Skenes, Bubba Chandler and Braxton Ashcraft all boasting well above-average strikeout capabilities (and, in the case of Skenes and Ashcraft, plus ground-ball rates that slightly lessen concerns regarding a shakier outfield defense). The lineup, meanwhile, has been one of the weakest — if not the weakest — in Major League Baseball for more than a decade. The last time Pittsburgh fielded even an average offensive club by measure of wRC+ was back in 2014.

An outfield with O’Hearn in left, Oneil Cruz in center and Reynolds in right would be ugly from a defensive standpoint, but a lineup including Reynolds, O’Hearn, Horwitz, Ozuna, trade acquisition Brandon Lowe and, eventually, the top prospect in all of baseball (shortstop Konnor Griffin) would be more formidable than anything the Pirates have trotted out in recent seasons.

The elephant in the room is that it’d be difficult to fit both Ozuna and franchise icon Andrew McCutchen onto the same roster. Both are right-handed hitting outfielders who’ve moved primarily into DH status — Ozuna in particular. He didn’t play a single inning in the field in 2024 or 2025 and only logged 14 innings in 2023. McCutchen played only 16 games in the outfield last season. They’d hold similar roles on this version of the Pirates, but the Bucs would probably feel more confident in Ozuna’s abilities versus right-handed pitching after he hit .235/.347/.415 against righties to McCutchen’s .228/.326/.358.

When McCutchen returned to the Pirates three years ago, he signaled that his intent was to close out his career in Pittsburgh, where he still lives. The team clearly felt similarly, welcoming him back in each subsequent offseason. He’s signed a trio of one-year, $5MM contracts as he continues that full-circle final chapter of his career. But the 39-year-old McCutchen recently voiced some frustration with the manner in which talks have (or have not) progressed this winter. Ken Rosenthal and Stephen Nesbitt of The Athletic reported this week that McCutchen met personally with team owner Bob Nutting last Thursday.

[Related: Where Can The Pirates Turn For Another Bat?]

Whether it’s Ozuna, McCutchen or another target entirely, it seems clear that the Bucs are still intent on adding to the lineup despite various high-profile misses. They had interest in Josh Naylor before he re-signed with the Mariners and were reportedly willing to offer him upwards of $80MM. They put forth a reported $120-125MM offer to Kyle Schwarber, which would’ve been the largest contract in franchise history. The Pirates had interest in both Kazuma Okamoto and Eugenio Suárez before the pair signed in Toronto and Cincinnati, respectively. Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Alex Stumpf of MLB.com both reported after the Suárez signing that the Pirates were willing to (or perhaps did) offer an extra year at the same annual value, but Suárez preferred to return to an organization he already knew — particularly given the Reds’ hitter-friendly park and last season’s playoff berth.

There’s still a week before pitchers and catchers report and about seven weeks until Opening Day. The Pirates’ $95MM projected payroll, per RosterResource, is up a bit from last year’s levels, but their pursuits of Suárez and especially Schwarber suggest a willingness to push things considerably higher. It’s likely they’ll add at least one more bat, but their options have dwindled considerably.