nice looking piston. Don't worry about the pin being in the ring land, with the oil ring support it really is not a big deal.
With the cylinder fill/rod length issue, I thought the shorter rods helped port velocity when using heads with a large port window compared to engine size/RPM, but the longer rods helped when using smaller port heads, and at higher RPMs?
I think in this case, the length difference would be too small to notice any difference.