Sabean strikes again

You may have seen the news today that the Pirates were not planning on offering Pedro Alvarez a major league contract. With the way the signings were going, it looked like they could probably ink Pedro for a $6-$7 million bonus sometime tomorrow. Yeah, that's not happening. The fifth overall pick, college catcher Buster Posey, signed on the dotted line with the Giants today for a big league deal and a $7.5 million contract. Obviously I don't know the particulars, but I'd be shocked if Boras and Alvarez even consider signing for anything less than what Posey signed for.

TANGENTIAL UPDATE: Grossman signs. This is awesome news.

More: You can read more about him here, but Baseball America had him as a top 50 prospect this year and he's a very high ceiling guy for a sixth round pick because he dropped pretty sharply for signability reasons. In the first link, DK speculates that he's going to cost somewhere close to a million dollars to sign, which tells you just how highly the Pirates think of this guy. Signing Alvarez is what everyone has been focusing on in this draft, but signing guys like Grossman and having a deep draft is every bit as important to the future of the team. If you wanted proof that this new front office is going to operate differently than the old one, it's staring you right in the face now.