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At 34, Lyle Overbay is the oldest player on the Pirates roster by a few months.

The left-handed hitting first baseman signed a one-year, $5 million deal in mid-December.

First-year manager Clint Hurdle hopes Overbay will be able to bring some clubhouse leadership to a team that has suffered through 18 consecutive losing seasons and is stacked with several players in their 20s.

"He's a veteran guy that I think will add a dynamic that we didn't really have internally," Hurdle said.

Overbay, 6 feet 2 and 220 pounds, is a lifetime .274 hitter who slipped to .243 last season with the Toronto Blue Jays, and he didn't attract much interest from other teams before signing with the Pirates.

"Obviously, the Pirates were being aggressive," Overbay said. "I looked at the situation, where the Pirates are and some of the other teams I was looking at, and I just think it was a better situation here and they were going in a better direction.

"To be honest, it's personal, too. I think Clint Hurdle brings a lot to the hitting and I'm a hitter. I see what he did with Texas, what he's done with some very good hitters."

The Rangers led the majors with a .276 batting average last season with Hurdle as hitting coach and advanced to the World Series.

The Pirates, on other hand, had the second-lowest team batting average at .242.

"A small-market team gets their young guys and works around those guys," Overbay said. "I think in the past, they have had maybe one or two guys like that here. I think now they've got like six or seven they can kind of build around. So they are pointing us in the right direction; they're moving forward.

"Obviously, we got to go out and prove it. You can talk all you want, but we got to go out there and do the little things to win the ballgame and not accept [losing] within the 25 guys here.

"We got to be held accountable for the stuff that we're doing. I want to be a part of this, the solution, the change, and be a part of something special."