Seven years ago today, the Diamondbacks came to terms with Justin Upton, the first overall selection in the 2005 amateur draft, on a five-year, $6.1MM contract. The deal marked the largest signing bonus given in a minor league contract for a drafted player, who was not a free agent. Today, Upton is the prime trade target of the offseason. Just within the last 24 hours, we learned there is no match with the Padres, the Braves haven't engaged in Upton talks since before Christmas, and speculation that a deal will happen as soon as Arizona is offered the right mix of players. In non-Upton news involving the Diamondbacks and the rest of the Senior Circuit:
- If the Diamondbacks don't move one of their outfielders, look for Adam Eaton to open the season at Triple-A, according to MLB.com's Steve Gilbert. "That's not in a perfect world what we want to have happen," GM Kevin Towers told Gilbert. "But we're not going to move an outfielder in a lousy deal just to move an outfielder."
- Within the same piece, Towers says discussions have been held with the Diamondbacks' six arbitration eligible players and he expects those negotiations to go down to the wire. You can follow the Diamondbacks' arbitration cases and those of MLB's other 29 teams with MLBTR's Arbitration Tracker.
- Acknowledging it sounds crazy and doesn't really think it's going to happen, Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post urges the Nationals to sign free agent closer Rafael Soriano. Kilgore sees agent Scott Boras convincing owner Ted Lerner the franchise has a finite window of competing for titles and Soriano is the final, missing piece.
- Earlier today, ESPN.com's Buster Olney suggested the Giants should look into signing Buster Posey to a Joey Votto-type extension. Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle, however, would be surprised by such a deal because the Giants have been burned by long-term contracts given to Barry Zito and Aaron Rowand. Schulman tweeted a good starting point in Posey talks would be the $53.5MM given to Tim Lincecum during his four-years of arbitration eligibility.
- The Marlins are sifting through the batch of unsigned free agent relievers and are able to sign an inexpensive arm or two with the salary relief leftover from trading Yunel Escobar, according to the Miami Herald's Clark Spencer.
- Rick VandenHurk, released yesterday by the Pirates, will sign with the Samsung Lions of the Korean Baseball Organization, according to Naver, a Korean news service, confirming a report first tweeted by Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net.
