Josh Naylor trade is another demerit on Ben Cherington's tenure with Pirates

The more moves other teams make to acquire first base help, the more it's starting to look like the Pittsburgh Pirates overpaid for Spencer Horwitz in their trade with the Cleveland Guardians.

The Guardians traded All-Star first baseman Josh Naylor to the Arizona Diamondbacks over the weekend for right-hander Slade Cecconi and a Competitive Balance Round B draft pick. Since he became a regular fixture in Cleveland's lineup in 2022, Naylor has a slash line of .267/.330/.465; the 27-year-old slashed .243/.320/.456 with a career-high 31 homers in 152 games for the Guardians in 2024.

Horwitz is a solid, albeit unproven first baseman who is decent at getting on base, and the Pirates thought he was worth giving up a versatile, young major league pitcher in Luis Ortiz, along with two left-handed pitching prospects. Naylor, meanwhile, is exactly the kind of power-hitting first baseman Pittsburgh desperately needs, and the cost for Arizona to acquire him wasn't all that high. Could Pirates GM Ben Cherington really not have put together a similar (or better) offer?

Josh Naylor trade shows Pirates overpaid for team control with Spencer Horwitz

In addition to Naylor, another first baseman came off the market this weekend when the Washington Nationals acquired Nathaniel Lowe in a deal that sent major-league relief pitcher Robert Garcia to the New York Rangers. Lowe is a former Silver Slugger and Gold Glove Award winner who won a World Series with Texas in 2023.

Like Horwitz, Lowe isn't much of a power hitter, but he's a reliable defender with above-average plate discipline. He is projected to earn $10.7 million in arbitration and is set to become an unrestricted free agent in 2027. He may not move the needle on offense for the Nationals the way that Naylor does for the Diamondbacks, but he provides an upgrade to the lineup and fills a void on defense.

And yet, the Nationals only needed to give up one big-league reliever to get Lowe. Why, then, did the Pirates give up so many assets for Horwitz?

In a word, control. The Pirates will have club control of Horwitz for the next six seasons. That's music to the ears of Cherington and Pittsburgh's penny-pinching owner, Bob Nutting.

The Pirates clearly believe Horwitz can produce for them both now and in the future. Rather than paying lesser amounts for short-term solutions at first base – a position that has constantly been a revolving door in Pittsburgh – the Pirates opted to pay a higher price for more years of control.

Only time will tell if the Pirates truly overpaid in the trade; but suffice it to say that Horwitz will have his work cut out for him to prove that he's worth all those extra years of team control.

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