Rays sign Ernesto Frieri

The Rays have announced that they've signed Ernesto Frieri to a one-year big-league deal. Frieri will make $800,000 with the potential to make up to $3.15 million with incentives.

The Pirates released Frieri in September after his disastrous stint with them, and he didn't sign anywhere else after that. It was a little surprising that the Pirates had to eat the entire remainder of his $3.8 million contract, given that he pretty clearly has big-league talent. But perhaps other teams felt that there wasn't much upside in trying to fix him, since they would have had to non-tender him after the season anyway.

This is a good low-risk pickup for the Rays. Frieri's peripherals indicate that he's still a capable pitcher, and we have no problem praising the virtues of making moves based on peripherals when the Pirates do that and it turns out well, as it did with Joel Hanrahan, Mark Melancon, and so on. Here's hoping Frieri can get his career back on track.