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.

I got to thinking the other day, and I realized that off the top of my head I couldn't positively name a nickel cornerback from any NFL team besides the Broncos.  Perhaps Karl Paymah is Minnesota's nickel, at least assuming Winfield is healthy.  I've been looking at some depth charts, and really I've barely even heard the names of many of these guys.

It seems like the position is generally a training ground for young corners, or a place where old corners go to die (ahem, Ty Law), so it is a position of flux, which makes it all the more difficult.  What do you guys think?  Who is the best nickel in the NFL?  Or, at least, who are some good nickels?

So during the broadcast on Sunday, one of the announcers said something about "we were wondering if it was MoRAYno or MoREEno, and Knowshon straightened that out for us".  What's the verdict?  Apparently, Knowshon told them that his name is pronounced MoRAYno.

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So we have two division rivals tonight on MNF.  I think it would be very apropos if anyone would like to discuss it a bit.

So far the Charger defense is nowhere to be found.  Getting gashed on the runs, and save Jamarcus not looking off a rookie receiver they probably would have already scored.  Now they are knocking on the door again, and Russel is looking alright.

And there it is, Bush runs in a TD.  I personally would care to root for the Black for this week!

To me, I have seen an excellent trend in our games this year, and it has to do with a single stat:  passes defensed.  The first game of the preseason, at San Francisco, we only defensed two.  The second game, at Seattle, we only defensed four.  This was troubling, because with the revamped secondary and increased pressure we were seeing up front, I expected us to be swarming to the ball and breaking up far more passes than last year.  In our historic three-game collapse last year, we managed four, two, and zero passes defensed against Carolina, Buffalo, and San Diego, respectively.  This is in line with our overall stats last year, since we were second to last only to the pitiful Lions with 57 passes defensed in all of 2008.  This compared to the league-leading 125 of the Ravens.

Now, with the third  game(the third game interestingly enough corresponding with the debut of Dawkins), we defensed seven passes.  Follow that with last nights performance, an eye-popping 14 passes defensed!  Average all four preseason games, we broke up 6.75 passes per game, extrapolate that over 16 games that would be 108 PD.  I know, we can't reliably take stats from meaningless games and predict the meaningful ones, but I'm still extremely encouraged by the defense so far.  We've done great job shutting down the run (97.5 yards per game), especially while the first team has been in, and the increased QB pressure and batted passes shows me this defense should be quite improved from last year.

Through this Brandon Marshall what-have-you I have become extremely annoyed with a little factoid (used correctly in this case) that is being thrown around.  Nearly every article I read about Marshall claims that Cutler demanded to be traded and "forced his way out of town".  Why is this taken as fact?  The idea of Cutler asking for a trade is not necessarily causally linked to Cutler being traded.  In actuality, the facts point in the opposite direction:  Cutler pitched a fit because the Broncos were listening to trade offers.  So when they follow through on these discussions, it means they caved to his demands?  Non sequitur, I claim.

José Tabata returned to the Altoona lineup this morning.  He was 0-2 with an infield popup and a centerfield flyout, while Altoona went down 1-3 to New Britain, and Daniel Moskos actually had a pretty good outing (7IP 2ER 1BB 3K) but got the hose on the loss.  He's now sitting on a pretty remarkable 2.55 GO/AO ratio, but he can't strike anyone out.

Tabata was replaced by Gorkys Hernández, who also went 0-2, presumably just to ease him back into the game.  Hernández didn't start, probably with this plan in mind in a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone approach since he has been slumping since joining Altoona.  I for one will be interested to see who moves out of CF when Tabata is back at "full strength".

Hopefully these two both start hitting and make Altoona a little more interesting (than watching paint dry), especially since Lincoln has been promoted.

I just wanted to find out if anyone knows about Sánchez's contract:  635 plate appearances he must get to automatically vest the option, unless he is an All Star, in which case there is a 600 plate appearance--virtually guaranteed--threshold.  I don't think he is going to get voted in, but without McLouth I don't know if there is anyone else on the team more worthy of an All Star spot.  Does it matter if he gets voted in or if he is an "All Star by default"?

Donnie Veal was apparently placed on the 15-day disabled list today with a "groin pull" that occured when he pitched for fifth time of the season on Friday.  By "groin pull" I mean "we need our roster spot back for a while", not that there are really any better options in AAA.  Dejan speculates that V V and Steven Jackson are the likely candidates, although I think it could be Chris Bootcheck.  His era is fairly poor, but they were pretty close to keeping him in spring training and his 32K/4BB in 23.1 innings is tremendous, which perhaps speaks to the idea that a couple of bad outings hurt his ERA (as can happen easily with relievers).

At any rate, it doesn't really matter who we bring up, they aren't going to be all that much better than Veal, but the difference will be that we won't be working with a six man (or five man as the case has been since Capps was beaned) pen.  It's nice to try and find a live lefty arm through the Rule 5, but when he simply can NEVER pitch it hurts, and I question how much value Veal himself is getting from nothing but bullpen sessions.

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