The St. Louis Cardinals Have Reportedly Signed Ronny Cedeño

The Cardinals' offseason of meh continues.

Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports has reported that the Cardinals have agreed to a one-year deal with veteran shortstop Ronny Cedeño worth $1.15 million with up to $850,000 in potential performance bonuses. The deal could be worth a maximum of $2 million.

With Rafael Furcal's elbow and back health being a major question mark, it seems the Cards wanted an established mediocrity as an insurance policy as opposed to up-and-coming mediocrities Pete Kozma and Ryan Jackson. Cedeño made his big-league debut at age 22 with the Cubs in 2005. Throughout his career, Cedeño was a horrible batter until last season, when he posted a career-best .332 OBP and .410 SLG while playing in the hitter's tomb that was Citi Field. That being said, his respectable .326 wOBA was posted over a mere 186 PAs. The following chart contains his career numbers.

RONNY CEDENO'S CAREER BATTING STATS

That's really horrendous, especially for a player the fielding metrics describe as being below average with the glove. I mean, Cedeño is really, really awful for his career. He probably shouldn't even be in the league. Well, maybe he isn't quite that bad.

As Dan and others have noted, Cedeño has been slightly less horrible as he has entered his prime years. I wouldn't say he has aged like a fine wine, but he has become less terrible as he has matured.

Basically, this is a signing that creates the illusion of depth. Cedeño is an inoffensive enough bench player, a middle-infielder who isn't good enough to play everyday and probably never should. If Furcal gets hurt, Cedeño is on the bench, ready to come in and make outs in over 70 percent of his plate appearances. Heaven forbid anything happens to Furcal because Cedeño will join forces with Daniel Descalso to become a brutal black hole at the bottom of the lineup.