Marcell Ozuna Is making two failed Pirates experiments look successful

Remember how angry Pittsburgh Pirates fans were about Rowdy Tellez's slow start in 2024? And Tommy Pham's in 2025?

At the time, both players became symbols of everything fans hated about the organization's annual bargain-bin approach to roster construction. Tellez was supposed to provide left-handed power and instead spent months looking completely overmatched at the plate. Pham wasted no time making headlines off the field but produced very little offensively while fans waited for signs of life.

Yet somehow, both of those failed experiments look like success stories compared to what Marcell Ozuna is doing in 2026.

Through 208 plate appearances, Ozuna owns a .573 OPS. For comparison, Tellez had a .617 OPS through 205 PAs in 2024 and Pham had a .603 OPS through 207 PAs in 2025. By mid-June of their respective seasons, both had begun to heat up. Their overall numbers still looked ugly, but there were stretches where it felt like better days might be ahead.

Ozuna, meanwhile, is hitting .200 over his last 15 games. His power has largely disappeared. And because he offers virtually no value on the bases or in the field, there is no secondary skill helping offset the offensive collapse.

When Ozuna was hitting 35 to 40 home runs annually, nobody cared that he couldn't run. When he was posting OPS numbers north of .900, nobody cared that he wasn't contributing defensively. That's the bargain you make with a designated hitter. The bat has to carry everything. And right now, it isn't carrying anything.

Marcell Ozuna's Pirates struggles look even worse compared to recent veteran flyers Rowdy Tellez, Tommy Pham

To be fair, Ozuna's struggles haven't completely sunk the Pirates. The offense has been dramatically improved compared to recent seasons. Brandon Lowe and Ryan O'Hearn have been among the club's best offseason additions, and the lineup has scored enough runs to cover for Ozuna's shortcomings much of the time.

But players cool off, and injuries happen. The Pirates are already seeing what life looks like without a fully healthy lineup. Oneil Cruz and Konnor Griffin are both sidelined with injuries, and the schedule has become less forgiving with matchups against teams like the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Those realities make carrying a non-productive designated hitter even more damaging. Every roster spot matters more when the margin for error shrinks. Ozuna's salary represents a meaningful percentage of the club's payroll. When that money produces a .573 OPS from a player whose entire job description is hitting, the opportunity cost becomes impossible to ignore.

The Pirates aren't the Dodgers. They can't simply spend another $12 million to fix the mistake. That makes getting these signings right even more important.

To Ozuna's credit, nobody questions his effort. By all accounts, he's been a good teammate. He hasn't created distractions, and he continues to work through his struggles. But the goal is to win baseball games, and right now, the Pirates are getting less production from Ozuna than they received from two veterans whose tenures are widely viewed as cautionary tales.

What's perhaps most concerning is that the organization still appears committed to waiting. General manager Ben Cherington frequently preaches patience with Ozuna and expresses confidence that a breakout is still to come. But we're approaching the middle of June, and the evidence increasingly points in the opposite direction.

Ozuna wasn't even coming off a great season when Pittsburgh signed him. He was 35 years old, and the decline signs were already there. And now, Pittsburgh may have purchased another reminder that not every veteran rebound story has a happy ending.

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