According to pittsburghpirates.com, SS Bobby Crosby had a physical this morning and his signing has been announced by the Pirates.  The deal is worth one million dollars for one year, but it apparently has incentives.  No word on whether this is a major- or minor- league deal, but Crosby did say "They're going to give me a chance to compete. At this point in my career, that's all I want."  Don't know if that means anything.  He comes quite a bit cheaper than he did for Oakland, who signed him in 2005 for a 5-year, $12.75 million deal.  Sometimes those "sign your young guys for relatively cheap before they demand more than you can afford on the free-agent market" deals just don't work out.

While Crosby has not been that exciting beyond a decent showing of power in his rookie year, Cedeño hasn't really been any better.  However, since depth behind Ronny basically consists of either Brian Bixler or a Barry Bonds cardboard cutout positioned at double play depth (Bixler has the edge defensively, but the cutout has the better bat), it is nice to at least have two borderline major-league talents at SS.  In other words, it is kind of like signing a 34-year-old starter for AAA:  not really very exciting, but you need to fill out the roster and provide some competition to the existing players.