We’ve known for several weeks now that the Pirates were interested in adding a shortstop to push Ronny Cedeno and that void has now been filled.  Late yesterday it was reported on Twitter by both Dejan Kovacevic and Rob Biertempfel that the Pirates would sign free agent SS Bobby Crosby.  Crosby was the 2004 AL Rookie of the Year but has also been plagued by injury issues throughout his career, only managing more than 150 games once, that being his 20004 ROY season.  This past year with Oakland he hit for a line of .223/.295/.357 which is slight upgrade of Cedeno’s 2009 numbers.  Defensively, its a similar story with Crosby being just ever so slightly better than Cedeno at SS.  Based on what Huntington has said thus far, it would appear that Cedeno would be the starter and Crosby would play due to injury or poor performance which makes sense due to Crosby’s injury issues.  At this point nothing is official, but all indications is that it will become official today and the contract is likely to be a 1 year deal in $1.5 million range.

Don’t be shocked if this is just the first major move the Pirates make at these meetings with more to come.  Already, there are rumors of trades involving Matt Capps, Ryan Doumit, Zach Duke and Paul Maholm.  If anything else major does go down I’ll be sure to post, but for all the minor moves and all the up to date rumors as the Winter Meeting’s progress, the best place to follow this stuff is the Post-Gazette’s PBC blog.

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