Cardinals sign Dean Anna to big-league deal

The Cardinals have announced that they've signed infielder Dean Anna to a big-league deal and placed him on their 40-man roster.

Anna, of course, finished the 2014 season as a Pirates farmhand, and it's always interesting to see a Pirates minor leaguer get a big league deal from another team. (It happens rarely; Scott Strickland is the last example I could think of, although a commenter notes that Erik Cordier got one last year.)

With the exception of Anna's brief stint in the Yankees organization, he's always hit very well for an infielder. He has a career .380 minor league OBP, and even at Indianapolis, where he wasn't playing every day, he put up a .398 OBP. The Pirates may have already gotten their high-OBP spare infielder in Jake Elmore, but he and Anna project similarly, play the same positions and are about the same age, so it's funny to see the Bucs pick up Elmore while showing very little interest in Anna, who wasn't even a September callup.

Congratulations to Anna, by the way -- he faced a tough road to the majors, and he had a great attitude about it, so it's nice to see him get an opportunity, even though we'll have to root against him now.