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It’s always a fun exercise: Suspend the rules of time and put together a starting lineup for a team based on that franchise’s best players.

The New York Yankees are Major League Baseball’s most accomplished franchise, with 27 World Series titles and 21 players or managers in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

So it should be easy to put a lineup together out of that group, right?

Not as easy as one might think. Some of the decisions were more difficult than others and, as is the case with all exercises such as this one, your opinion may vary.

With the prelude out of the way, here is the all-time starting nine for the New York Yankees, listed by batting order, plus a starting pitcher.

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***UPDATE: Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com tweeted Saturday evening that the Seattle Mariners and Raul Ibanez had reached a contract agreement.***

George King of the New York Post reported Saturday that the Seattle Mariners are reportedly showing “serious interest” in free-agent outfielder Raul Ibanez, who played for the New York Yankees in 2012.

King, citing a “person with knowledge of the situation,” said Seattle would like to sign the 40-year-old who hit .240/.308/.453 with 19 home runs and 62 RBI in 425 plate appearances for New York last season.

Ibanez has served two previous stints with the Mariners, as a reserve from 1996-2000 and as their everyday left fielder and sometimes designated hitter from 2004-08. His second stay with the Mariners included the most productive years of his career, when he hit .291/.354/.477 with 113 homers and 489 RBI over those five seasons. He drove in more than 100 runs three times during that span, including a career-high 123 in 2006.

According to King, the Yankees have been in talks with Ibanez’s agent but stressed those talks have not included actual contract negotiations.

Ibanez said earlier this winter that he would like to return to the Bronx, but the Yankees have not made re-signing him a priority.

Instead, the Yankees have been searching for an outfielder who swings from the right side of the plate to provide some depth and alternatives to lefty-swinging regulars Brett Gardner, Curtis Granderson and Ichiro Suzuki.

New York has interest in free-agent Scott Hairston, but Hairston wants a multi-year contract, and that has been a sticking point for the Yankees, according to King, who also said the Philadelphia Phillies have shown interest in the former New York Met.

On Friday, David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal Constitution tweeted the Atlanta Braves were also interested in Hairston.

One potential right-handed hitting outfielder came off the market Saturday, according to Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News. Feinsand tweeted Saturday morning that Cody Ross had agreed to terms on a three-year contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks, citing a league source.

The departure of Ibanez—who set a postseason record in 2012 with three home runs in the playoffs hit in the ninth inning or later—could leave Eduardo Nunez as a viable option as the designated hitter, according to King.

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November is normally a quiet time for Major League Baseball. The awards are handed out, the free agents file and then the jockeying goes on quietly as teams prepare for the winter meetings in December.

Not so much this year.

For starters, the new collective bargaining agreement drastically changed free agency. Instead of a December deadline to offer arbitration to pending free agents, teams had a Nov. 13 deadline by which to choose to extend a one-year, $13.3 million qualifying offer.

Then, the Miami Marlins and Toronto Blue Jays got together to pull off one of the largest trades in baseball history, a 12-player blockbuster that completely altered the landscapes in the East Division of both the American and National leagues.

Free agents are beginning to sign, with outfielder B.J. Upton moving north from Tampa Bay to Atlanta on Thursday after signing a five-year, $75.25 million deal.

So with that as a backdrop, which five teams are seeing their stocks soaring?

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Ichiro Suzuki wants to return to the New York Yankees in 2013, according to George King of the New York Post.

Suzuki’s agent, Tony Attanasio, told King:

“There has been a lot of interest [from teams], but he enjoyed playing for the Yankees so much it’s hard for him to say no to the Yankees. His preference is to stay there instead of going someplace else, but we will wait and see.”

Suzuki, 39, seems to be a logical replacement for free-agent Nick Swisher in right field. He hit .322/.340/.454 with five homers and 27 RBI in 240 plate appearances with New York after a July 24 trade from the Seattle Mariners.That was a vast improvement from the .261/.288/.353 he had posted in 423 plate appearances with the Mariners.

Suzuki was also one of the few Yankees to show signs of life at the plate during the postseason. The 10-time All-Star was 11-for-40 in nine playoff games, with a homer and five RBI. He also hit a pair of doubles and scored three runs.

Suzuki played mostly in left field after the trade, the first time he had played the position since coming to the major leagues from Japan in 2001. Most of his major-league career has been spent in right field, however, and he is a 10-time Gold Glove winner at that position.

If Suzuki is to return to the Yankees, he will make considerably less than the $17 million he was paid in 2012. Any offer is also likely to be a one-year deal, in keeping with the organization’s stated goal of reducing payroll to less than $189 million in 2014.

Suzuki is waiting while the Yankees focus on their pitching, specifically 40-something free agents Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera.

B/R featured columnist Doug Rush discussed the Pettitte situation in a piece posted on Monday, which speculated Pettitte might make his decision about 2013 this week. That has not happened as of yet. Rivera, meanwhile, told the Yankees earlier this month that he wants to come back in 2013.

Suzuki could add a lot to the Yankee lineup in 2013. Even at his age, he’s still got speed on the bases and could team with Derek Jeter and Brett Gardner to provide a solid 9-1-2 group of table-setters in the order.

According to King, the Yankees have spoken to Casey Close, the agent for free-agent outfielder Scott Hairston, and are not averse to the idea of bringing back playoff hero Raul Ibanez on a one-year deal.

Hairston, 32, spent the last two seasons with the New York Mets and hit .263/.299/.504 with 20 homers and 57 RBI in 398 plate appearances in 2012. He can play all three outfield positions and has also played a bit of second base in his nine-year career.

Ibanez, 40, would like to return to the Bronx. He hit .240/.308/.453 with 19 homers and 62 RBI in 425 plate appearances last season for the Yankees. In the playoffs, he became the first player in major-league history to hit three home runs in the ninth inning or later in a single postseason.

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New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano became a U.S. citizen earlier this month and the New York Daily News reported Thursday that he plans to don the red, white and blue next spring during the World Baseball Classic.

The red, white and blue of the Dominican Republic, that is.

Cano told the Daily News:

“I still have to play for the Dominican, even if I didn’t want to. If I played for the U.S., I don’t think they would ever let me come home. You saw what happened with Alex (Rodriguez); a lot of people got upset in the Dominican when he played for the U.S.” 

Cano’s decision may annoy some folks in the U.S., but don’t mistake loyalty to the Dominican Republic as a rejection of his adopted home country.

According to the Daily News, Cano began preparing to take the citizenship test in spring training. He went to school in the Newark, N.J., area for three years before returning to the Dominican while he was in high school.

His mother became a citizen in 2011, prompting Cano’s decision to follow suit.

“I spend more time in New York than the Dominican,” Cano told the Daily News. “I play here, I live here, so why not become a citizen?”

Cano is entering the final year of his contract in 2013 with no discussions on the horizon about an extension. Cano is not expected to offer the Yankees any sort of a hometown discount, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, particularly not after hiring Scott Boras to represent him.

Boras has already said that he thinks the Yankees are making a mistake with their plan to trim payroll to less than the $189 million luxury-tax threshold in 2014.

“Are you going to put your brand at risk, when your brand is having more superstars than anyone else?” Boras told FOXSports.com earlier this month. “Superstars are good for business. Superstars make money for franchises and their television networks.”

Sherman said there are “strong indications” that serious talks between Boras and the Yankees about Cano won’t happen until Cano’s contract expires next fall. As that is Boras’ usual strategy when negotiating for his premier clients on the verge of free agency, that statement certainly makes sense.

Back to the World Baseball Classic. The Dominican Republic will be playing in Pool C at San Juan, Puerto Rico, from March 7-10 along with Venezuela, Puerto Rico and one of the four nations that survived qualifying (Spain, Canada, Brazil and Chinese Taipei). The championship round is scheduled for March 17-19 at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

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The New York Yankees have agreed to terms with right-hander Hiroki Kuroda on a one-year deal, according to ESPN.com.

Sources reportedly told ESPN The Magazine’s Buster Olney the deal is worth $15 million plus incentives. The incentives are said to be worth less than $1 million.

The money makes sense; Kuroda had turned down the Yankees’ qualifying offer of $13.3 million on Nov. 9 and was said to be pondering a return to Japan.

Looking forward, the deal brings New York’s most consistent starter back for 2013. Kuroda was 16-11 with a 3.32 ERA and a 1.17 WHIP in a career-high 219.2 innings.

There is every reason to believe Kuroda will be just as good in 2013 as he was in his first season in pinstripes; five reasons to be exact.

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There are two types of baseball fans.

There are those who love the New York Yankees. Then there is everybody else, the overwhelming majority of whom positively loathe the Yankees, their fans and pretty much everything they stand for.

Some of that ill will doubtlessly extends from the franchise’s overwhelming success. The Yankees’ 27 World Series titles are far and away the most in the history of the sport.

But that engenders hatred for other reasons, too. The fans bring a lot of that on by wielding the phrase “27 championships” like a bludgeon.

Let a fan of another team say they like their team’s chances to win and it is likely that somewhere in the course of that conversation, a Yankee fan will come forward and simply say or write, “27 championships.”

It does make it hard to have reasonable, rational discourse when all that one side of the conversation wants to do is keep repeating the same fact.

But 40 years of Yankee fandom has exposed something else, something more insidious. It’s something that makes a lot of that vitriol coming from other places easier to understand.

Yankee fans can be unbelievably spoiled and not just by the success the franchise has enjoyed. The Yankees’ history of big spending in free agency has created an atmosphere in which fans of the team start to view every other franchise as some sort of department store in spikes.

Since the World Series ended, I have read Yankee fans enthusiastically endorsing things that have absolutely no chance of happening in the real world.

Those things would include:

—Signing free-agent outfielder Josh Hamilton.

—Signing free-agent pitcher Zach Greinke.

—Trading for catcher Buster Posey.

—Trading for pitcher David Price.

—Trading for outfielder Andrew McCutcheon.

—Signing or trading for every single player in baseball, declaring the franchise World Series champions for life and building a permanent 75-foot tall replica of the Commissioner’s Trophy outside Yankee Stadium.

OK, so one of those was made up.

One commenter on this story about the Yankees’ offseason plans and the proposed $189 million payroll for 2014 even went this far:

“If you were a true Yankee you wouldn’t support 189 million.”

Obviously a fan of the Yankees couldn’t support a front office that is only willing to spend more than any other franchise in baseball spent on its payroll in 2012. Or at least that was the opinion expressed by the fan quoted above.

There will be some adjustments necessary as the payroll is trimmed. According to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the Yankees already have $68.125 million committed for 2014 on just three players (Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia). That total could rise to if Derek Jeter opts to exercise his player option for 2014, currently valued at $9.5 million.

Under the proposed payroll plan, that would leave roughly $120 million to fill 21 roster spots. That presents a challenge, particularly for an organization that is short on major-league ready prospects down on the farm.

There might even be a 2-to-4 year period during which the farm system is rebuilt and restocked at the expense of the big-league club. It might even mean missing the postseason a time or two—an outcome that would mortify Yankee fans and delight the rest of the country, more than likely.

But if it means getting the pieces in place down on the farm to create the core of the next Yankee dynasty, there are a significant number of New York Yankee fans who would be OK with this.

And then there are those other ones; the ones the rest of the baseball-loving public love to hate.

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The biggest name in the massive trade reportedly agreed to Tuesday night between the Miami Marlins and the Toronto Blue Jays was shortstop Jose Reyes.

But while Reyes may headline the list of five players moving from the Marlins to the Blue Jays in the 12-player blockbuster, the player who may have the most impact in Toronto is right-hander Josh Johnson.

According to FOXSports.com, the Blue Jays will get Reyes and Johnson along with starting pitcher Mark Buehrle, utility man Emilio Bonifacio and catcher John Buck.

In return, the Marlins will receive shortstops Yunel Escobar and Adeiny Hechavarria, right-hander Henderson Alvarez, catcher Jeff Mathis and a trio of minor-leaguers. The minor-league players in the deal are reportedly left-hander Justin Nicolino, center fielder Jacob Marisnick and right-hander Anthony DeSclafani.

There are always worries when a pitcher moves from the National League to the more hitter-friendly American League, but here are four reasons Johnson should be able to make that transition with ease.

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New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi had a “great” phone conversation with slugger Alex Rodriguez last week, according to an anonymous source who spoke with ESPNNewYork.com.

According to the source, the call happened Friday. That was the same day CBSSports.com reported that Girardi placed a call to the public address announcer during a postseason game at Yankee Stadium. The call, according to the report, was to request Rodriguez not be named when Raul Ibanez was going to pinch-hit for A-Rod.

Instead, Ibanez went to the plate and was announced, but there was no mention of the player he was hitting for.

It’s nice for Girardi to be considerate of Rodriguez’s feelings, but it doesn’t do the embattled slugger any favors.

Fans of the Yankees and every other team in Major League Baseball have more than a half-billion reasons—the combined dollar amounts of A-Rod’s last two contracts—to hold him to a much different standard than they do any other player in baseball.

Ever since Rodriguez left the Seattle Mariners as a free agent after the 2000 season, he’s never been perceived the same way. Signing for a then-record $252 million will do that to a player. ESPNNewYork.com’s Wallace Matthews wrote last week about the standard Rodriguez is held to by fans. According to Matthews, A-Rod’s image began to change when former New York Mets general manager Steve Phillips talked about the demands being made by Rodriguez during the Mets’ courting of Rodriguez in the offseason of 2000-01.

Among those were private jets, big billboards and an office. When he eventually signed with the Texas Rangers, he got all of those perks.

But Girardi didn’t do A-Rod any favors by making that call to the public address booth during the postseason. What, fans weren’t smart enough to realize on their own that Rodriguez wasn’t hitting?

Instead, it heaps more abuse on Rodriguez even though he had nothing to do with this incident.

For a dozen years, A-Rod has dealt with a perception—fair or not—that any club he plays for has a “24-plus-one” hierarchy. There is the way Rodriguez is treated and then there is the way the other 24 guys on the roster are managed.

It’s a positive development if, as the anonymous source said, Girardi and Rodriguez were able to have a productive conversation moving ahead to the 2013 season.

It’s unfortunate it had to come on the heels of another episode becoming public knowledge where Rodriguez was treated differently than anyone else in the Yankee dugout.

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And just like that, the Alex Rodriguez-to-Miami talks may be over before they even began.

There had been much speculation over the last 48 hours about the viability of dealing Rodriguez to the Miami Marlins. Most of that speculation involved reliever Heath Bell coming back to the Yankees as part of the trade package. MLB.com columnist Terence Moore discussed the potential deal’s viability on Friday, determining the deal made sense for both teams.

As it turns out, maybe not so much for the Marlins in that scenario.

The Marlins dealt Bell to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday as part of a three-team deal that also included the Oakland Athletics. Arizona got infielder Cliff Pennington and minor league infielder Yordy Cabrera from the Athletics for outfielder Chris Young and cash. The Diamondbacks then flipped Cabrera to the Marlins for Bell.

Bell became expendable after losing the closer’s job in Miami to Steve Cishek. By that time, Bell had blown eight saves in 27 chances and recorded a 5.09 ERA in 73 appearances. The Marlins had signed Bell, a former All-Star with the San Diego Padres, to a three-year, $27 million contract last offseason.

Bell was part of an offseason shopping spree in Miami that included trading for former Chicago Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano. The Marlins also signed free agents Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes and brought in a former World Series winner in manager Ozzie Guillen.

But Miami underachieved badly in 2012, losing 93 games and finishing last in the National League East to open their new ballpark. The Marlins started selling in July. They sent former batting champion and displaced shortstop Hanley Ramirez to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Later, Miami shipped pitcher Anibal Sanchez and infielder Omar Infante to the Detroit Tigers.

There were going to be complications aplenty to a potential Rodriguez trade to begin with.

For starters, Rodriguez has a full no-trade clause in his contract, which means he would have to approve any deal.

Then there’s the matter of that $114 million still owed to Rodriguez over the next five years. Any potential trade was likely going to involve New York eating a significant, if not overwhelming, portion of that remaining payout.

Bell made sense in a deal with the Marlins because of the $18 million he is still owed for 2013 and 2014. The Yankees could have taken back that contract and picked up a big chunk of the remaining tab on Rodriguez in order to send A-Rod back to his hometown of Miami.

But Rodriguez declared after the Yankees were eliminated by the Tigers in the American League Championship Series on Thursday that he wasn’t going anywhere. New York Daily News reported Friday that the 37-year-old Rodriguez had no plans to waive his no-trade clause.

“That’s correct,” Rodriguez said. “I will be back. I have a lot to prove and I will be back, on a mission. I love New York City and I love everything about being a Yankee. The highs are very high, and the lows are extremely low.

“But I’ve never thought about going to another team. My focus is on staying here. Let’s make that very, very clear. No. 2, I don’t expect to be mediocre. I expect to do what I’ve done for a long time.”

The trade rumors began in earnest as Rodriguez struggled through the postseason with a 3-for-25, zero-RBI performance. He was benched for three games, pinch-hit for in two others and was 0-for-18 with 12 strikeouts against right-handed pitching.

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