The Pirates can't buy a healthy infield right now. Oneil Cruz and Spencer Horwitz are already parked on the injured list, and now the crown jewel of the whole rebuild, rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin, is joining them with a torn tendon in his left ring finger.
Pittsburgh rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin has a torn tendon in his left ring finger, sources tell ESPN. While Griffin could play through it, rehab is the likeliest option and would keep him out at least a month. Pirates already have Oneil Cruz and Spencer Horwitz on the IL.
Passan's report laid out the situation clearly: Griffin could technically try to play through it, but rehab is the far more likely path, and that alone was projected to cost him roughly a month. It got worse from there. Per research, the injury is actually a torn sagittal band in that left ring finger, the connective tissue that stabilizes the extensor tendon, suffered diving for a ball up the middle. Doctors are recommending six weeks in a splint with no surgery, non-operative care to let it heal properly.
10 weeks is a brutal chunk of a season for anybody, but it's a gut punch for a 20-year-old who's barely had time to settle into the league. Griffin was the 9th overall pick in the 2024 draft and shot up prospect boards faster than almost anyone in recent memory, debuting this past April as one of the youngest position players in MLB history. A week after that debut, Pittsburgh signed him to a 9-year, $140 million extension, the biggest contract guarantee in franchise history. This is a guy the Pirates built their entire timeline around, and now he's watching from a splint.
What makes it sting more is that this isn't even Griffin's first injury scare of the summer, he's now dealt with two separate issues in about two months. Add that to Cruz and Horwitz already being out, and Pittsburgh's infield depth chart currently reads like a taxi squad roster. Jared Triolo is sliding over to shortstop and Jake Mangum is picking up leadoff duties, which is a massive drop-off from a lineup that was supposed to be anchored by two of the more electric young infielders in baseball.
There's a real Rookie of the Year subplot buried in here too. Griffin was squarely in that conversation before the injury, and 10 weeks off the field is the kind of gap that can hand the award to someone else entirely. For a Pirates team trying to prove its rebuild is actually working, losing its most electric young talent for a quarter of a season is the kind of setback that's hard to spin as anything other than a real problem.