{"id":115264,"date":"2026-03-07T15:02:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=115264"},"modified":"2026-03-07T15:02:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:02:26","slug":"pittsburgh-pirates-konnor-griffin-triple-a-ridiclous-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/03\/07\/pittsburgh-pirates-konnor-griffin-triple-a-ridiclous-reason\/","title":{"rendered":"Konnor Griffin to Triple-A?! Pirates May Do It for a Ridiculous Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

There isn\u2019t a single Pittsburgh Pirates fan who wouldn\u2019t be thrilled to see Konnor Griffin<\/a> open the year as the Bucs\u2019 starting shortstop. He is the number one prospect in all of baseball, and for a good reason. Griffin put up a .941 OPS, .437 wOBA, and 165 wRC+ across three levels of the minor leagues in 2025. He also went yard 21 times, stole 65 bases, and flashed impressive defense at shortstop. However, Pittsburgh sports reporter Andrew Filliponi recently quoted insider Andrew Mackey, who said the Bucs may start Griffin at Triple-A for the most ridiculous reason possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/x.com\/ThePoniExpress\/status\/2029684000847970581<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

For… Batting Average?<\/h2>\n

This<\/span> is <\/span>insane<\/span> for multiple reasons. The first is batting average. It\u2019s not 1980 anymore; it\u2019s 2026. Major League Baseball teams do not value batting average like that anymore, especially for making roster decisions of this magnitude. What makes it even more ridiculous is that it\u2019s Spring <\/span>Training’s<\/span> batting average. G<\/span>riffin has just 15 plate appearances in Spring Training. For one, it\u2019s way too small a sample size to make a declaration on Griffin\u2019s bottom-line performance, let alone using just batting average. All three of Griffin\u2019s hits this spring have been home runs. He is slugging .857. That gives him a 1.124 OPS in the small sample size.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, the next reason is that we\u2019re talking about Spring Training statistics. Spring Training sample sizes are almost always unreliable<\/span>. Spring Training stats began <\/span>getting tracked<\/span> in 2006. Since then, the top five hitters for the Pirates in terms of batting average (min. 50 plate appearances) are Michael Ryan, Ronny Paulino<\/a>, Matt Hague<\/a>, Lyle Overbay<\/a>, and Luis Rivas<\/a>. They all batted over .360 with the Pirates in Spring Training.\u00a0<\/span>The third reason is that Griffin has been absolutely ripping the cover off the ball in spring. <\/span>This<\/span> is even more important than his batting average in the pre-season. He has seven batted balls over 100 MPH. The most in the league as of now is 11, held by Jose Fernandez of the Arizona Diamondbacks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the True Intention Behind This?<\/h2>\n

The question is, will this truly be the route the Pirates take with Griffin? If he gets sent down, it won\u2019t be because of his batting average. You can criticize the Pirates all you want, but they aren\u2019t so far behind the <\/span>curb<\/span> they\u2019re still using batting average as one of their go-to measuring sticks for roster decisions. The Pirates may send him down for service-time reasons, or because he has barely played above High-A, both of which hold more water than reasons related to his batting average.<\/span><\/p>\n

So why would the Pirates say this if they have better reasons to send him to Triple-A to start 2026? It could be for leverage reasons. The Pirates and Griffin are interested in an extension<\/a> (and hopefully they hammer one out before Opening Day<\/a>). Any leverage in negotiations is important <\/span>for either side<\/span>. <\/span>This<\/span> could be like when Bryan Reynolds<\/a> asked for a trade months before they agreed upon an extension. <\/span>It\u2019s very possible that getting traded was <\/span>not<\/span> a top priority for Reynolds or his agent, but rather used <\/span>this<\/span> as a negotiating tactic.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if this is a negotiating tactic by the Pirates, it is still a ridiculous reason, nonetheless. Using batting average as a measuring stick in nearly any context by <\/span>a MLB<\/span> team is beyond questionable. Teams know much better than not to use batting average to evaluate players, let alone in small Spring Training sample sizes.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There isn\u2019t a single Pittsburgh Pirates fan who wouldn\u2019t be thrilled to see Konnor Griffin open the year as the Bucs\u2019 starting shortstop. He is the number one prospect in all of baseball, and for a good reason. Griffin put up a .941 OPS, .437 wOBA, and 165 wRC+ across three levels of the minor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5765,"featured_media":114751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"566","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,35,26],"tags":[1374,28625,18359,28806],"class_list":["post-115264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-news","category-pirates","tag-bryan-reynolds","tag-konnor-griffin","tag-lyle-overbay","tag-matt-hague"],"modified_by":"Augustus Oswald, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5765"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115271,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115264\/revisions\/115271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}