Konnor Griffin injury setback makes this offseason signing look even worse

The Pittsburgh Pirates can put whatever kind of paint job they want on the Konnor Griffin injury. Maybe it’s minor. Perhaps this is a cautious 10-day injured list move that looks smarter in two weeks than it does right now. But the part that should bother fans the most is what Griffin's absence says about a roster problem the Pirates created all by themselves.

Griffin had already been moved to designated hitter duty for a couple of days while the team tried to give his throwing arm a break. It all made sense. He’s only 20 years old, absurdly talented, and important enough that Pittsburgh should be treating any warning light on his body like it means something. If the arm needs a breather, give it a breather. 

Then Ryan O’Hearn returned from the injured list, and suddenly everything got weird.

Marcell Ozuna’s roster fit is becoming harder for the Pirates to defend

O’Hearn belongs in the lineup. That’s a non-issue. He’s been one of the Pirates’ more useful offensive pieces. He's slashing .293/.372/.473 with eight home runs and 30 RBI. But another veteran, Marcell Ozuna, hasn’t even come close to that kind of production. 

Ozuna was supposed to be the veteran who brought the pop. The winter signing that gave a young Pirates lineup some grown-man power without requiring the front office to do anything too bold. Instead, he has become a roster anchor in the worst possible way.

And in this case, not the good kind of anchor. We’re talking about the kind where you ask why it’s still attached to the boat.

This is the problem that comes with signing a bat-only veteran who doesn’t bring the bat to the ballpark. There’s nowhere to hide him.

Ozuna doesn’t bring defensive flexibility. He doesn’t help the Pirates run. He has one job description: hit the ball. When he’s not doing that, the conversation gets brutally simple.

And now Griffin’s injury has made that conversation louder. The Pirates had a way to protect Griffin without removing his bat from the lineup. They could use him at DH while the arm calmed down. It’s a soft landing a team should want for its prized rookie. But the DH spot is not clean because Ozuna is still hanging around, and O’Hearn’s return only squeezes things tighter.

Slashing .186/.271/.302 with five home runs and a 61 OPS+, Ozuna is looking like a worse signing by the day. But the real problem is that his slump comes with no escape hatch. If the bat is not carrying the profile, there’s not much else for the Pirates to justify.

The good news is that Griffin’s injury doesn’t sound like a disaster. The bad news is that the Ozuna problem is not going away just because Griffin’s IL stint might be short.

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