Joe Starkey: Better late than never, Pirates. This is going to be interesting.

Joe Starkey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Dec 25, 2025

Published in Baseball

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PITTSBURGH — In some ways, I would imagine, the Pirates finally making significant moves might only serve to fuel one's rage over last offseason and the many before it.

Especially last offseason, and how they wasted another precious year of Paul Skenes.

But that is water under the Clemente Bridge now. The Pirates are finally putting action to their words. They have reeled in two thoroughly professional hitters in the past week in Brandon Lowe and Ryan O'Hearn.

Those two combined for 48 home runs last season, which represents 41% of the Pirates' paltry total of 117, by far the lowest in the majors. The next-meekest team was the St. Louis Cardinals with 148 homers.

Add one more legit bat, and this lineup will look radically different. It kind of already does.

Imagine if that "one more" is free-agent third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who hit 49 home runs last season and remains an affordable option. Or perhaps Japanese star free agent Kazuma Okamoto.

Imagine if by June, the lineup looks like something this on a given day, one through seven:

1 — Konnor Griffin, SS

2 — O'Hearn, DH

3 — Lowe, 2B

4 — Suarez, 3B

5 — Bryan Reynolds, RF

6 — Spencer Horwitz, 1B

7 — Oneil Cruz, CF

Even without Suarez or another addition, this could get very interesting. The 6-foot-4, 225-pound Griffin is the best prospect in the game, seemingly a surefire star. There remains a chance he'll head north with the club out of Bradenton. He's still only 19.

O'Hearn is a high on-base guy — tied for 14th in all of baseball last season in on-base percentage, ahead of players such as Bryce Harper, Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor — with decent power.

Lowe is coming off 31 home runs and slugged at a better rate (.477) than the likes of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Kyle Tucker and Manny Machado. PNC Park seems built for him.

Speaking with reporters this week, Lowe said, "Something about seeing a ball go flying into the river seems very, very exciting."

Doesn't it, though?

I'm going to bet on Reynolds returning to his normal numbers this season. It seems like 2021 was an outlier great year and last season was an outlier dud (16 homers, .720 OPS). I'd expect him to rise back to around a .790 OPS with 25 home runs.

Cruz remains a mystery. Hopefully, less pressure will equal more production. Horwitz wound up having a pretty good season, with a .353 on-base percentage.

A couple of other adds could figure in the mix, as well. Jhostynxon Garcia, brilliantly nicknamed "The Password," is the 85th-ranked prospect in baseball. Another outfielder, Jake Mangum, seems like a version of Ji Hwan Bae that can actually play. Mangum hit .296 with an eye-popping 27 steals in 405 at-bats with Tampa Bay last season.

Nick Gonzales could also be of help, just not as a primary piece. Andrew McCutchen's time here could be ending.

After trading for Lowe, general manager Ben Cherington said, "We're looking forward to doing more. I mean, we haven't hit Christmas yet and there's a lot more out there for us."

In previous years, those words would have been laughed off. This year, Cherington put some clout behind them — and some more clout into that pop-gun lineup of his by adding O'Hearn.

Interesting, indeed.