Pirates To Sign Marcell Ozuna

8:05am: ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that Ozuna will earn $10.5MM in 2026 salary, plus a $1.5MM buyout on a $16MM mutual option for the 2027 season. A mutual option hasn’t been exercised by both parties since 2014, so that option effectively just kicks a portion of the guarantee down the road by a year.

7:54am: The Pirates and slugger Marcell Ozuna are in agreement on a one-year, $12MM contract, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports. The CAA client’s contract is pending a physical.

Ozuna turned 35 in November. The 2025 season was a down showing by his standards, but he was still a better-than-average offensive performer overall down in Atlanta. He batted .232/.355/.400 with a career-high 15.9% walk rate, a 24.3% strikeout rate, 21 homers and 19 doubles in 592 plate appearances. That overall line was weighed down by a brutal stretch in the middle of a roller-coaster season. 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.

The downturn in production dovetailed with a hip injury through which Ozuna continued to play at less than 100%. It’s impossible to say for certain whether that, age, or a combination of both was the driving factor in last season’s dip in bat speed, but Statcast measured his bat speed at 75 mph in 2023 (86th percentile of MLB hitters), 74 mph in 2024 (81st percentile) and 72.9 mph in 2025 (64th percentile). Accordingly, his typically elite exit velocity and hard-hit rate both fell. Ozuna averaged 89.9 mph off the bat and logged a 44.4% hard-hit rate in 2025. Both are still decent marks, but they’re down considerably from the 92.2 mph and 53.3% marks he posted as recently as 2024.

While Ozuna ought to be an upgrade to Pittsburgh’s lineup overall, the fit isn’t exactly perfect. Beyond the fact that PNC Park is perhaps the worst environment in MLB for right-handed power, the Buccos’ roster is a bit cluttered with corner bats who could use some of the DH time that Ozuna will now command on an everyday basis. Spencer Horwitz and Ryan O’Hearn had been lined up to share time at first base and designated hitter, with O’Hearn perhaps seeing some time in left. 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, who has hasn’t played in the field at all in either of the past two seasons (and only logged 14 innings in 2023), likely pushes O’Hearn into an everyday role in the outfield. He has plenty of experience on the grass but rates as a sub-par defender there, whereas he’s an above-average defender at first base. Horwitz does have 604 professional innings in left field to his credit, so he could perhaps be on option in left as well, but all 604 of those frames have been in the minors — half of them back in 2019 and 2021. He’s played some second base, too, but that was a short experiment and the Pirates already acquired Brandon Lowe to man that position.

Presumably, the primary alignment moving forward will have O’Hearn in left field, Lowe at second, Horwitz at first base and Ozuna at designated hitter. It’s not Pittsburgh’s ideal setup from a defensive standpoint, but the Pirates will make that sacrifice in the name of getting some quality bats into the middle of what has typically been one of MLB’s weakest lineups over the past decade-plus. Newcomers O’Hearn, Lowe and Ozuna will join holdovers like Reynolds, Horwitz and Oneil Cruz, giving the Bucs a potentially strong top six in their order at the very least — and that’s before counting shortstop Konnor Griffin, who is the sport’s consensus No. 1 overall prospect and should debut in 2026.

Bringing Ozuna into the fold also seems to formally put an end to Andrew McCutchen’s second act in Pittsburgh. He could feasibly be a right-handed bench bat who takes some occasional corner outfield reps, but McCutchen played 120 games at designated hitter in 2025. Signing Ozuna clearly displaces him from that role, and it’s hard to see the two fitting together on the same roster. McCutchen recently met with Pirates owner Bob Nutting, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported last week — a meeting that came on the heels of the franchise icon voicing some frustration with the manner in which the team had handled offseason talks.

Adding Ozuna pushes the Pirates’ payroll to $105MM, per RosterResource, which will somewhat remarkably establish a new franchise-record for Opening Day payroll. It’s still a very modest total relative to the rest of the league, but the Bucs have spent more than $50MM in free agency overall and also taken on Lowe’s $11.5MM salary in a trade with the Rays. It’s possible there are additional moves to come. The Pirates have been in the market for third base upgrades as well. That market has been largely picked over, but there are still surely some creative options they can pursue on the trade market.

It’s not clear exactly how much more ownership is willing to boost the payroll, but the team’s reported four-year, $120-125MM offer to Kyle Schwarber and the flurry of subsequent additions pretty clearly indicates that Nutting is willing to spend at levels he has not considered approaching in the past. The Bucs currently have a plus defender at the hot corner in Jared Triolo, but he’s a well below-average hitter who’s capable of fielding multiple spots around the infield, so he could fit nicely in a utility/bench role if GM Ben Cherington can find a third base acquisition to his liking on the trade market.