The NS9 Report is the start to your week. Posted bright and early every Monday morning, I’ll break down the three things that I’m looking for each week in Pirates land.
Games Start February 21st
While it’s always fun to get those cell phone videos from the beat writers of Konnor Griffin hitting a car in the parking lot and the pitchers firing a bullpen, the spring training games get going this week with the first game on Saturday against the Orioles in Sarasota at 1:05PM. The Pirates play a total of 32 games this spring. Thirty one of those games will be in the Grapefruit League and one game on March 3 is against Team Columbia before the World Baseball Classic starts.
The Pirates will play the Orioles the most of any one team this spring with five games against Baltimore. They also play the Braves and Tigers four times apiece, the Rays and Red Sox three times each and then they’ll have two games each against the Phillies, Yankees, Twins, Astros, Cardinals and Blue Jays.
We’ll have you covered for the first two weeks of games beginning with the opener at LECOM Park on Sunday, February 22 versus the Rays. The boys will be in Bradenton at NS9AirBnb churning out plenty of content for the first two weeks of games. I’ll be making it down there myself from March 4-7 and can’t wait to catch some warm sunlight and baseball. Here’s the full broadcast schedule for this spring.
AJ Burnett in Camp
On Sunday the Pirates players were greeted by a visit from AJ Burnett. Pirates Manager Don Kelly extended the invite for Burnett to come out to camp for several days and talk shop with the boys and Burnett took him up on it. Fans have hinted for years that the Pirates should bring AJ in to be a coach for the team, and I always thought it was silly because he’s shown no desire to pursue coaching at a professional level, doesn’t have any coaching expereience and seems to be having fun with his kids since his retirement. But seeing him in camp Sunday talking with the boys, giving advice and insight to the pitchers and whoever else is interested is pretty cool. I’m all for anything AJ Burnett wants to do.
AJ talked about what it means to win in Pittsburgh per Jason Mackey’s tweet above and he’s 100% correct. We haven’t seen this very often where more recent Pirates alumni are there hanging out in camp so it was a good move by Don Kelly to invite him to camp.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this week goes with him there, what pitchers gravitate to him and anyone that maybe surprises him after spending days with the guys. And who knows, maybe this will eventually lead to something like a more permanent position with the Buccos that would make my Twitter timeline very happy. DiNardo and Jim talked about AJ Burnett’s presence in camp as well on Bucco Brew Monday morning so check out their takes on that and all things spring training here:
DH Position and Roster Move
When the Pirates signed Marcell Ozuna, who hasn’t played the outfield since 2023, it seemed like it was settled that Ozuna would be your main DH and played 140 games there, but last week Ben Cherington said something that would make that statement not the case.
Now that confuses me a bit. He continued to say that Kelly wants the DH spot to be available to players to rotate through. Now ideally that was going to be the plan with the DH position, but I thought everything changed with the Ozuna signing. Ozuna is strictly a DH…right? So what’s happening here? Ozuna is no spring chicken himself and at 35, was there possibly a discussion about him playing less games, say maybe 120 this season instead of the last three seasons where he played 145, 162 and 144 games. I wouldn’t think they’d want him to play less games considering he signed for $12.0M. Or is there a chance Ozuna plays the field a bit to allow other players to rotate through the DH role? We saw Andrew McCutchen jump in and play the field last year for a handful of games even though it wasn’t ideal but it is possible. Maybe Ozuna has expressed interest in jumping back into the field once a week if need be. But this is one of the developments I’m keeping an eye on as spring training progresses. Once games start up this weekend and we get more quotes from Donnie, we’ll hopefully have some more light shed on this situation.
Ozuna reported to camp yesterday so once he speaks with the media we may get his thoughts on what his expectations are with games played and if he’ll be fully playing the DH position. Also, the Pirates still haven’t officially announced the signing yet so they’ll need to make a roster move to clear a spot for Ozuna on the 40-man so that should be coming early this week. They will need to either DFA someone on the 40-man, make a small trade or move someone to the 60-day IL spot so look for that as well.
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