A couple of things I’m hearing…

The San Jose-Mercury News was reporting that No. 5 pick Buster Posey was on the cusp of signing a deal worth a reported $7.5 million. No confirmation as of yet — Giants are being tight-lipped — but if I find anything out to confirm this, I’ll pass it along.

Things are looking dicey with No. 7 pick Yonder Alonso and the Cincinnati Reds. The Cincy Enquirer talked to Alonso, and he said he’s not budging on his initial contract demainds — $7 million and a big-league contract. I’ve learned the Reds aren’t budging right now either from their “final” offer. Not sure exactly what that is, but one guess was that it was about $500,000 above slot for that position. No. 6 pick Kyle Skipworth got $2.3 million and No. 8 pick Gordon Beckham signed yesterday at $2.6 million. I’m no mathmetician, but that can’t be much more than $3 mil or so — not even close to Alonso’s asking price.

No. 9 pick Aaron Crow has signed with the indy-league Fort Worth Cats. The two sides seem far apart on this one.

The Mariners don’t have the same pressure to sign No. 20 pick Josh Fields that other teams do. Frankly, I didn’t realize this until recently, but because Fields is a senior, the Mariners actually have until next spring (before the next draft) to sign him. He can’t go back to school. One interesting theory is that Fields’ advisor Scott Boras is trying to drive up the price for Fields to make more money for his unsigned juniors (Alvarez and Dykstra now, others in the future). The idea is that if he can get more money for Fields, a senior, then using the threat of sending his junior clients back to school for their senior year has more credibility. Just a theory, but makes some sense, no?

More later on…