Where the Pittsburgh Pirates welcomed a day off after getting swept at home by the Cleveland Guardians, one player couldn’t wait to finally take some swings against live pitching for the first time this year.
Following a Sunday morning workout, Spencer Horwitz packed his bags and headed to the airport for an extended spring training at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla.
“It’s exciting,” Horwitz told TribLive. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel when I get back into the (batter’s) box but I’m excited right now to get on this plane and get to Florida. It’s been a long, long road to recovery, but it seems we’re real close right now.”
Acquiring the 27-year-old first baseman from Cleveland via Toronto was the Pirates’ marquee move of the offseason, only for Horwitz to require surgery on his right wrist a week before the start of spring training. Horwitz batted .265/.357/.433 with 19 doubles, 12 home runs and 40 RBIs in 97 games for the Blue Jays as a rookie last season.
That Horwitz could only watch during the Grapefruit League and first 22 regular-season games was “definitely not ideal.”
“Not how I wanted my tenure with the Pirates to start,” Horwitz said. “I didn’t envision this. I don’t know, maybe it will make a great story here in a few months.”
Horwitz has gradually increased his productivity. He has been fielding grounders at first base off the fungo bat from coaches and throwing but has yet to take a live grounder in a game situation. He graduated from taking swings off the velocity machine and Trajekt pitching robot in the batting cage to hitting during batting practice on the field at PNC Park for the first time last week.
“I’m ready to go, gnawing at the bit to get back, if you will,” Horwitz said. “At spring training I was feeling it, just taking ground balls and getting that itch being around the guys and being on the field. There’s nothing like it. That’s been the focus the last few weeks, just building up the volume. I’ve been swinging 100% the last few weeks. I’m ready to go and just super excited.”
Spencer Horwitz taking BP before Pirates-Nationals game at PNC Park. pic.twitter.com/jAHBkhY0Ip
— Kevin Gorman (@KevinGormanPGH) April 14, 2025
Pirates senior director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk said the club timed Horwitz’s trip to Bradenton with Dauri Moreta’s rehabilitation. The right-handed reliever, recovering from Tommy John surgery, is scheduled to throw live batting practice this week. Horwitz hasn’t hit live pitching since late last September, so he needs hitting volume to replicate the 40-50 plate appearances he missed in spring training.
“That’s part of the calculus there,” Tomczyk said. “He didn’t have a spring training so to put him, the player, in the best position to have a really successful season, we have to at least a platform to get that.”
Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said on the weekly radio show Sunday that MLB rules restrict position player rehabilitation assignments to 20 days, so Horwitz will try to simulate spring training at the Florida complex before playing in minor league games sometime later this month or in early May.
“He’ll have the opportunity to get into game situations in Florida with the extended program and then from there, assuming that goes well, we’ll put out a rehab calendar,” Cherington told reporters Friday. “He hasn’t played a single game of baseball in 2025, so I would expect that we’re looking at something as close to a full spring training as we can engineer. I mean, not exactly spring training, but this is not going to be a five-game rehab assignment or something. It’s going to be longer than that.”
Then again, Cherington doesn’t expect it to last six weeks, either.
“We’re hoping to beat that,” Cherington said. “We’re hoping to beat that, but I’m also not going to put a date on it. Just hard to say.”