Based on the answer suggested by jared I was abled to find a workaround.

fig.canvas.draw() #This forces the text to be set

#Replace offset text
for i in range(3):
    offset_text = ax[i].get_yaxis().get_offset_text()
    ax[i].annotate(offset_text.get_text(), xy = (.01, .85), xycoords='axes fraction')
    offset_text.set_visible(False)

This forces the canvas to render, takes the offset text and replaces it with an annotation.