Note: see update at the end

We are now a week into free agency and let’s just say that things aren’t really happening yet. At least not with this year’s crop of free-agent players. We’ve seen a handful of managers finding new homes. Now we’re getting news of the Pirates hiring a new Director of Amateur Scouting.

The Pirates have hired Justin Horowitz as their new Director of Amateur Scouting, per sources.

He comes over from the Red Sox, where he started as an intern in 2012, then worked full-time in various scouting roles for nine years.

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) November 13, 2023

Justin Horowitz has spent the past eleven years climbing the ranks of the Red Sox scouting system. First as a college intern and then spending ten months as an assistant of amateur and international scouting as his first full-time position with the organization. From 2015-2018 he was an area scout serving areas on the West Coast. Following his time as an area scout he was promoted to a Crosschecker which works on special scouting projects across the country as well as working with the analytics and development teams. His latest promotion with the Red Sox came in 2020 when he became a Special Assistant of Amateur Scouting. Here he scouted top draft prospects as well as working in more of a supervisory role within the amateur scouting department.

Horowitz has been a critical member of the Red Sox scouting team for years. He tabbed Jarren Duran as a 7th rounder in 2018, and was a significant part of the team’s process with first rounders Marcelo Mayer and Mikey Romero, among others. https://t.co/xwDzMxF0nE

— Alex Speier (@alexspeier) November 13, 2023

Earlier this year, the Red Sox promoted Devin Pearson to Director of Amateur Scouting while promoting Paul Toboni, their former director, to Vice President of Amateur Scouting. Pearson started with the team as an intern in 2017. It is said that Horowitz was second in line for this promotion and was deserving of such a position.

It’s difficult to evaluate moves like this from a fan perspective. When a team signs new players, there is a wealth of information out there to look at. For very obvious reasons, teams don’t open up their scouting operations to outside scrutiny. It doesn’t inspire much confidence when the primary thing that people reporting on this want to highlight is his being involved with scouting Jarren Duran.

It is unclear at the time of writing this if Horowitz was hired to replace current Director of Amateur Scouting Joe Dellicarri. I imagine we will find out when the team makes the official announcement whether Dellicarri has been promoted/moved to another position or let go.

This move is one that we won’t really see meaningful results to analyze for quite a while. Next year’s draft will likely be the first time we can see the real impact of this hiring and that of course will take years to effectively evaluate. I guess for now all we can do is hope that this pans out.

Update

Alex Stumpf over at DK Pittsburgh Sports is reporting that Joe Dellicarri will be staying on with the team and will remain an important part of the amateur scouting leadership team.