Cliff Pennington

The Arizona Diamondbacks have extended the contract for newly acquired infielder Cliff Pennington, keeping him in Phoenix on a two-year, $5 million deal. The signing was reported by Buster Olney of ESPN via his Twitter feed.

Right now the Oakland athletics are trying to establish a core of a winning team. They have already given two players multi-year contracts: Brett Anderson and Kurt Suzuki. Although they still have some cheap young players who haven't hit arbitration, I think they should continue to create a young core and give some players long contracts.