Pittsburgh Pirates fans have been trained to treat the word “considering” like it’s a coupon that expires the second you try to use it. So when the buzz around Kazuma Okamoto started up again — not just as a name on a wish list, but as a guy the team has reportedly met with multiple times — it finally feels like Pittsburgh is operating like a club that expects to win games in 2026, not just develop players for some undefined “later.”
According to Colin Beazley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Okamoto and the Pirates have held “multiple virtual meetings,” which is about as close as this franchise gets to hard evidence that they’re actually hunting a real bat.