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The growing trend in baseball is for teams to sign their young players to contract extensions in hopes of locking them up before they become too expensive. While it's a smart financial move for all teams, it's generally a real good move for teams with lower payrolls. The Indians started it with Grady Sizemore a few years ago, then the Rockies followed suit with Troy Tulowitzki. This season it's been Evan Longoria and Hanley Ramirez reaping the rewards of baseball's new trend.

One smaller market team that is yet to adapt to this new philosophy is the Kansas City Royals, but that doesn't mean they don't have some young, talented players who wouldn't mind an extension.

"It's just kind of a feel thing," general manager Dayton Moore said. "Obviously, there has to be a willingness on both sides. We talk about a lot of things, but we're still very early in the process."

The Royals are loaded with young players who project as key players for years to come. Of those, the closest to free-agency are pitcher Zack Greinke and catcher John Buck. Both are on track to enter the market after the 2010 season.

Neither has been contacted by club officials about possible extensions.

For their parts in it, both Greinke and Buck would be open to talking contract, but it's not a necessity for both.

"Any player would welcome some talks because that's security you're talking about," Buck admitted. "You can root your family down. That's the plus side of it. The other side is how much money is that worth to you?"

Of course, there is a difference in the situations in Kansas City and everywhere else. Of all the players I named earlier who got a contract extension, none of them were pitchers. It's just a lot easier for a team to figure out what they're probably going to get out of a hitter in his career, where as with pitchers, it's more of a crapshoot than anything else. A pitcher can be the next Sandy Koufax one day, and then just be a guy with a bad elbow the next.

So if I'm Greinke, I wouldn't expect the Royals to be sitting down anytime soon. Not to mention that even though he's had a nice start to this season (4-1 1.80 ERA), he's still 25-36 in his career. As for Buck, I see his extension being a lot more likely.

He's not going to get a huge deal like the players before him, and he shouldn't, but if the Royals are really pleased with his bat and handling of the staff, they should keep him around. It shouldn't cost them that much money to do it, either. Still, I think the Royals would be better served trying to work out similar deals with Alex Gordon, Mark Teahen, or Billy Butler before going after Buck or Greinke.