Pirates Sign Blaine Boyer, Brett Sinkbeil

The Pirates signed pitchers Blaine Boyer and Brett Sinkbeil to minor league deals, tweets Baseball America's Matt Eddy.

Boyer, 29, signed a minor league deal with the Mets in January after being non-tendered by the Diamondbacks, but was designated for assignment on April 10th.  He elected free agency rather than accept an assignment to the Mets' Triple-A club.  Boyer posted a 4.26 ERA, 4.6 K/9, 4.6 BB/9, 0.5 HR/9, and 65.8% groundball rate in 57 relief innings for Arizona last year.  His groundball rate ranked third in baseball among those with 50 innings, and he averages around 94 miles per hour on his fastball, so he'll keep getting chances.

Sinkbeil, the 19th overall pick in the 2006 draft, was released by the Marlins in late March.