Since the beginning of the offseason, the Pirates have been discussing potential targets to fill one of their more pressing needs over at first base. On Tuesday night, they filled that void in acquiring Spencer Horwitz from the Guardians Tuesday night, as Ben Cherington said Wednesday the deal solidified quickly and picked up steam through the day. 

"He's been a really consistent performer. Obviously, it's a position that has been an area of need for us for awhile now. So, we've had a list of guys out there we've been kind of tracking, and he was one of them," Cherington said of Horowitz, who was originally traded from Toronto to Cleveland earlier Tuesday. "Had dialogue directly with Toronto, I think probably back over the course of a couple years about him and made some attempts to get him directly from Toronto. Just wasn't able to do that. So, it worked going through Cleveland this time." 

In addition to the consistent level of play Cherington alluded to, the Pirates value the fact that they have six years of club control of Horwitz. Up to this point, he’s only accumulated 152 days of major-league service time, so he’ll be arbitration-eligible in 2027 and a free agent in 2031.

"We hope he can be an important part of it. He's got less than a year of service, so still want to see him earn that and we don't need to make decisions right now about exactly who's in the lineup and how often and all that. But, we believe in the bat, we believe in the person," Cherington said. "We believe he has a chance to be part of that solution. And, glad that we have a chance to have him for a while."

Considering they didn't have to utilize the free-agency avenue to acquire a first baseman, the Pirates may have more room to allocate available financial resources toward addressing their other areas of need. That was something I asked Cherington about: 

"Aside from believing that we've upgraded the offensive group, I think another thing we liked about the deal was we feel like it pretty much keeps as many options open for us as possible," Cherington said. "It doesn't really close us off to anything. So, that was another aspect that appealed to us." 

In making this move, the Pirates traded from an area in which they had a surplus of talent to improve elsewhere. Now that they've dealt a quality major-league pitcher in Luis Ortiz, as well as two top-20 prospects in Michael Kennedy and Josh Hartle, Cherington said, "at some point you got to be careful." 

"We want to maintain that as a strength and you go too far, you start to dig into it too much and all the sudden, you can get yourself in trouble," he added. "So, we'll need to be thoughtful and careful about it. Still feel like that's an area of strength and depth. We'll just have to see what comes."