Baseball’s winter meetings officially kicked off Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, bringing with them the usual expectations of free agent signings, trades and the vast majority of rumor and speculation ultimately going nowhere.
But sometimes, the rumors that seem so far-fetched actually do become reality, while other moves, on rare occasions, are announced without a whisper of them ever actually making the rumor mill rounds. Those are the kind of potential moves we’ll focus on here: the out-of-nowhere and highly unlikely.
From Gold Glove outfielders to Cy Young Award-contending starters and former MVP candidates, these moves would not only surprise the baseball universe, but change the outlooks of the teams involved, both in 2016 and beyond.