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MLB free agency has certainly slowed down a bit after a wild start, but it’s far from over.

There are still a lot of big names available this offseason as players hold out for the biggest and best possible deal that they can find on the market. Some of these players are waiting for the dominoes to fall, waiting for players like Chris Davis to sign before they put their pen to paper.

This list is not ranked because each player serves a different need. While Davis is arguably one of the league’s best players and a player any team would love to have, a pitcher like Antonio Bastardo may fill a more important need for a specific team more so than Davis would. 

Here, you will find some player predictions ans a little insight as to why each player is still available. January marks the beginning of a new year, and free agency is the opportunity for a fresh start.

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The glacial market for bats is slowly beginning to thaw, which means the long winter wait for Yoenis Cespedes, Chris Davis and Justin Upton should soon draw to an end as Week 9 of the 2015-2016 MLB offseason comes to a close.

While those unemployed sluggers dominate the conversation, there’s also room for some talk about a retired masher and a former ace whose Hall of Fame credentials are in the headlines.

Plus, an important question has popped up in Southern California following the latest executive addition to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ All-Star front office.

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Free agency is great when it works, and it doesn’t only work when a player signs a record contract or when your favorite team grabs the biggest star in the game.

Free agency works when a player gets to play where he wants the most and the team gets to keep the player it wants the most. It works when a small-market club can energize a region, win a World Series and still have a chance to go after another one.

The Kansas City Royals were never going to be able to keep every player who took them to the top, but they’ve kept the one they really wanted this winter. And by signing left fielder Alex Gordon to a four-year, $72 million deal, which Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com first reported, the Royals proved free agency can work for everyone.

OK, so maybe the process is not working all that well right now for the St. Louis Cardinals, but no Royals fan is going to feel sorry for the Missouri team that so often gets what it wants.

The Royals were an ugly mess for so many years, but they got to the top by doing almost everything right. They got the right management team and the right players, and they put together an organization that no one wants to leave.

They targeted this window to win, knowing some things had fallen into place and that they couldn’t keep this group together forever. Soon enough, the bill would come due, with Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain and Wade Davis all eligible for free agency after the 2017 season.

So the Royals threw everything they had at winning now. They went all out after Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist at the July 31 non-waiver trading deadline, giving up prospects even though they knew both players would almost certainly be half-season rentals.

The Royals weren’t going to keep Cueto or Zobrist, and there was plenty of doubt whether they could keep Gordon. Just a few days ago, one club official expressed hope but also caution, saying the Royals would have a good chance unless the bidding got to $100 million.

Apparently, it didn’t get there—perhaps because of the number of outfielders on the market (Yoenis Cespedes and Justin Upton remain unsigned) or because Gordon will turn 32 in February.

He still gets a contract that easily breaks the club record (Mike Sweeney and Gil Meche held the old record at $55 million). He gets $18 million per year (only 10 outfielders in the game make more, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts).

And he gets to live where he wants and play where he wants. Gordon grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, and has homes both there and in Kansas City. He went to school in Lincoln at the University of Nebraska, signed with the Royals as the second overall pick in the 2005 draft and has never gone anywhere else.

He first showed up as the third baseman who was going to be the next George Brett, and then he became an outfielder who was loved by scouts and analytics folks alike. He’s superb defensively, and offensively he fits perfectly in the Royals lineup.

When he suffered a serious groin strain early last July, some worried the loss might ruin the already promising Royals season. I wrote the next day they were strong enough to get by without him, and sure enough they went 31-18 in the 49 games he missed.

Losing him now would have been much more costly.

The Royals have more young talent on the way, but they have no one like Gordon to step in after a winter where they will likely let their other starting corner outfielder, Alex Rios, leave via free agency. In an American League Central that is looking increasingly competitive after winter moves by the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers, the Royals will be challenged to stay on top.

Retaining Gordon reinforces the idea they’re willing to try. By keeping the contract reasonable and short enough, they may even have a better chance of retaining some of those post-2017 free agents, too.

There’s no guarantee any of them will want to stay as much as Gordon did or that free agency will work out as well for the Royals then as it has now.

But that’s two years down the line. First, the Royals get more chances to win with this group—chances to extend a window that easily could have closed soon after those hundreds of thousands of fans showed up for the World Series parade.

That day, not knowing whether he was saying goodbye, Gordon picked up the microphone and thanked “the best fans in the world.”

Two months later, there’s no need for goodbyes.

This time, free agency worked.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The crazy part about Yoenis Cespedes, Chris Davis, Alex Gordon and Justin Upton all remaining unemployed at this late date in the offseason is that there’s still a tremendous need for corner bats across the game.

The Kansas City Royals, San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals are just a few of the contending clubs who should add an impact hitter as the 2016 season inches ever closer.

Before compiling the shopping list that follows, the first order of business was defining the term “contender.” For the purpose of this exercise, contenders had to meet one of two requirements:

1. Post a .500 record or better in 2015
2. Work aggressively to improve their club on the free-agent and trade fronts this winter

Ultimately, 21 clubs cleared at least one of those bars and cracked a spot. And with the Senior Circuit flooded with teams in tank mode, the American League dominates the list.

Starting in the AL West and moving across the league, let’s explore the one pesky area—whether it’s a position, depth or a quality (like power)—that each contender needs to address to mask a weakness and improve its playoff chances. 

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Yoenis Cespedes, Chris Davis, Alex Gordon and Justin Upton have historically bad luck.

As Joel Sherman of the New York Post sees it, the market for free-agent game-changers has never developed at a slower pace.

“Never has there been this many talented free agents unsigned this late into the offseason.”

While those unfortunate and unemployed stars wait to find out where they’ll be playing in 2016, let’s play a game of offseason musical chairs and predict where everyone will end up when the music stops.

Free-agent hitters dominate the conversation, but there’s also room on the list for a prediction about one trade target who smashed 40 home runs during the season that was.

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For the Miami Marlins, the club’s New Year’s resolution is incredibly simple: Just don’t trade Jose Fernandez.

While the Fish don’t have to do anything at all, action will be required for the vast majority of major league squads if they’re going to fulfill their respective resolutions.

The New York Yankees have built a wicked nasty pen, but the rotation still needs an ace. The San Francisco Giants still have some unchecked bullet points on their offseason shopping list, and the Los Angeles Dodgers have an enigma to solve.

There are also teams such as the Atlanta Braves who have to subtract—and subtract big. And one club has to halt a drought that has been going on for way too long.

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Yoenis Cespedes had help, but the fact is the New York Mets were just two games over .500 when he arrived and National League champions when he left. Cespedes isn’t perfect, but the fact is his teams have gone 334-229 in games he has started and 179-229 when he hasn’t.

He’s a game-changer, and with the Mets he was a season-changer. And while they could justify not re-signing him for baseball reasons (not wanting to play him every day in center field) or for money reasons (the owners aren’t going to let the payroll grow very much, if at all), the Mets are going to miss him and some other team is going to be very happy to get him.

Who will that other team be? The Cespedes market has generated surprisingly few strong rumors, but Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com provided a perhaps-significant update Tuesday afternoon on Twitter:

So maybe Cespedes becomes the second big addition the Chicago White Sox make this winter, after their trade for third baseman Todd Frazier. Or maybe he becomes the outfield bat the Baltimore Orioles have sought since losing Nick Markakis and Nelson Cruz to free agency.

He’d be a nice fit with the Los Angeles Angels or the San Francisco Giants, the two teams whose left fielders had the fewest RBI in the major leagues in 2015. But Angels owner Arte Moreno recently told Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times his team is “probably going to be out” of the free-agent left fielder sweepstakes, and the Giants already spent a lot of money this winter adding Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija to their rotation.

The White Sox and Orioles make sense. The White Sox might make the most sense of all, even though they already have three starting outfielders in Melky Cabrera, Adam Eaton and Avisail Garcia.

Those three guys combined hit only 39 home runs last season. Cespedes hit 35 all by himself. The White Sox as a team hit the fewest home runs in the American League, an incredible stat for a team that plays home games at U.S. Cellular Field.

Adding Frazier should help. Adding Frazier and Cespedes would really help.

Suddenly, the White Sox would be what they were supposed to be last year: a true contender in the American League Central.

The division includes the World Series champions, and some Kansas City Royals fans would be quick to point out that their team won the AL Central by 12 games over the second-place Minnesota Twins (and finished 19 games ahead of the White Sox). I’ll repeat my claim that it’s now the most interesting division in baseball, in part because it’s the one division where all five teams seemingly believe they can win it in 2016.

That may or may not be true in the American League East, where even though Cespedes could be a big help in Baltimore, he may not be big enough. Unless the Orioles are prepared to sign Cespedes and Chris Davis—doubtful, given that signing either one would require the biggest contract in team history—Cespedes would be more of a replacement than an addition.

And given that the Orioles were a .500 team with Davis hitting 47 home runs, it’s hard to argue Cespedes turns them into champions.

It would be an easier argument with the Angels, where Mike Trout could use a little help and Albert Pujols will be coming back from surgery on his right foot. It would be an easier argument with the Giants, where the Cueto and Samardzija signings were big, but the lineup still looks a little light.

It would be easier with the Mets, if you could trust Cespedes playing center field, or with the Detroit Tigers, if they hadn’t needed their available funds to fix a broken pitching staff.

It would also be easier to predict where he’ll end up if the market wasn’t flooded with outfielders. Jason Heyward has signed, but Justin Upton and Alex Gordon remain as free-agent options for any team interested in Cespedes. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported Tuesday on Twitter that the White Sox have considered Gordon as well as Cespedes.

Nothing against Gordon, but Cespedes would make the bigger impact. Cespedes on the South Side of Chicago might make the biggest impact of all.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

When Kenta Maeda took the mound for one of his final starts with the Hiroshima Carp, about three dozen major league scouts made their way to Koshien Stadium to watch. That’s three dozen, as in more than 30, meaning on that September afternoon, some big league teams had more than one set of eyes watching the 27-year-old right-hander.

And that was for just one of Maeda’s 29 regular-season starts in 2015.

“He’s probably been scouted as much as any [Japanese pitcher],” one American League scout said last week. “I don’t think there’s any mystery.”

Oh, but yes there is.

Some major league team is likely to give Maeda a whole bunch of money in the near future, and the first question everyone will be asking is whether he’s worth it. He may not be the ultimate unknown, but signing him isn’t really just like signing David Price or Zack Greinke, or even Mike Leake or Yovani Gallardo.

Even in the modern baseball world, where you can look up Maeda’s Japanese professional stats on Baseball-Reference.com and where there’s a Kenta Maeda channel on YouTube featuring highlights and interviews, we still don’t really know how eight seasons of success in Japan will translate when he’s pitching in the United States.

We will soon know which team is going to take that chance, because the posting system that provides big league teams with the opportunity to take Maeda also gives them a Jan. 8 deadline to sign him. The Carp will then get $20 million from that team.

That team could well be the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have a long history of international signings and haven’t exactly hidden their interest in Maeda. After he visited Los Angeles earlier this month, reporter Joseph Kim tweeted this picture of the Dodger Stadium video board:

Plenty of other teams like Maeda, too, including those of two scouts who have seen him regularly and shared their reports with Bleacher Report. A Japanese professional baseball executive also weighed in, and all three men were offered anonymity because they were offering opinions their clubs would prefer they didn’t share publicly.

The two scouts, one from an American League team and one from a National League team, were in general agreement that Maeda will be a solid major league starter who will fall a little shy of ace status. In terms of starters who have come from Japan, think Hiroki Kuroda or Hisashi Iwakuma rather than Masahiro Tanaka or Yu Darvish.

“A solid mid-rotation guy,” the American League scout said. “If you’re expecting him to be a 1 or a 2, I don’t think that’s fair to him.”

“A prototypical blue-collar starter,” the other scout, who works for a National League team, said. “Think of a guy who might go 13-9 or 14-10.”

The Japanese executive shot a little higher.

“I see him as being as good as Tanaka in MLB,” the executive, who doesn’t work for the Carp and has no financial stake in how Maeda does, said. “And he might not take much time to transform into a solid starting pitcher.”

Maeda throws a fastball normally clocked between 89 and 93 mph, but the NL scout said he’s seen 94 or 95 mph at times, “if he needs it.” He throws a cutter and a changeup that showed improvement late this season. He’s a strike-thrower, with only 41 walks in 206.1 innings this past season for the Carp, and both scouts praised his athleticism and said he holds runners.

The one concern, the AL scout said, is how Maeda will adapt to pitching on a major league schedule. Starting pitchers in Japan normally start only one game a week, whereas in a typical major league rotation, a pitcher will often be asked to pitch on just four days’ rest.

The adjustment can be significant. The New York Yankees still try to give Tanaka extra rest when they can. Darvish said in 2014 he would prefer a six-man rotation, per David Waldstein of the New York Times.

“I like everything about [Maeda],” the AL scout said. “But my biggest concern is that he’s been pitching once every seven days. His stuff plays every seven days. Will it still play every five days?”

Those concerns didn’t keep the Yankees from giving Tanaka a seven-year, $155 million contract, on top of the $20 million posting fee. The Texas Rangers signed Darvish under the old posting system, paying a posting fee of almost $52 million and then giving him a six-year, $56 million contract.

Tanaka and Darvish throw harder than Maeda, and both were seen as having “strikeout stuff” that scouts say Maeda lacks (although he did fan 175 batters in his 206.1 innings in Japan).

“He’s a better pitcher than Darvish, but he doesn’t have Darvish’s stuff,” the NL scout said. “But he’s certainly as good as Iwakuma or Kuroda.”

That wouldn’t be bad. Kuroda didn’t come to the major leagues until he was 33, but in seven seasons, he had 79 wins and a 3.45 ERA. Iwakuma, who was 31 when he jumped to the Seattle Mariners, is 47-25 with a 3.17 ERA in four seasons.

He agreed to a three-year, $45 million free-agent contract with the Dodgers before a failed physical caused the team to back out of the deal. Even then, he re-signed with the Mariners on a contract that only guarantees him one year and $12 million but could end up going three years, according to Jon Heyman of CBS Sports.

Iwakuma has had injury issues dating back to his time in Japan. Maeda had some shoulder issues in 2014, according to reports in Japan, but none in 2015. In any case, he averaged more than 200 innings a year over his final seven seasons, which is impressive because Japanese teams play 143-game seasons and rotation usage limits starters to around 30 starts.

Besides his consistency and durability, Maeda earned respect in Japan for what the executive called his “plus-plus intensity.” And while the scouts rated his stuff as good but not great, Japanese hitters voted his slider as the best in the league, in a recent survey by Fuji TV.

“The guy simply can win,” the executive, who is also familiar with American baseball, said.

The guy also proved his interest in competing at the highest level by asking the Carp to post him after each of the last three seasons. The team declined the first two times but agreed to make him available to major league teams this winter.

Because of the constant rumors he would be posted soon, dating back at least to when Maeda pitched for Japan in the World Baseball Classic in March 2013, teams have followed him closely.

He shouldn’t be too much of a mystery to them.

Now, hopefully, he’s not quite as much of a mystery to you, either.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

This year’s crop of MLB free agents ranks as one of the most talented in recent memory. There’s not only a ton of front-line talent but also plenty of depth across the board.

As a result of that depth, a few players have gone relatively unnoticed this offseason, with little in the way of buzz surrounding their potential landing spots.

Ahead is a closer look at seven free agents who are not getting the attention they deserve this winter.

It’s a collection of role players, proven veterans and intriguing buy-low candidates who could all make a bigger impact than expected during the 2016 season.

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Tony LaRussa and Dave Stewart just couldn’t help themselves when it came to Zack Greinke.

When the Arizona Diamondbacks chief baseball officer and general manager saw the chance to bring the righty to the desert and punch a Greinke-sized hole in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ rotation, they pounced—even if the price tag was a staggering $206.5 million including deferred money.

The crazy part about the D-backs’ big-money play for Greinke is that it’s not even the move that could end up causing the club the most remorse.

The winter shopping season isn’t over just yet, but already, LaRussa and Stewart aren’t the only big league execs whose free-agent and trade activity could prove more regrettable than attending a wedding in Game of Thrones.

The three teams who crack this list all acquired top-tier free-agent and or trade targets who have the potential to make a decisive impact in 2016. The problem is that all three clubs did so while paying an exorbitant sum of money which could end up hamstringing the respective franchises down the line.

Let’s get this thing started with none other than the brass at Chase Field.

Arizona Diamondbacks

The D-backs sure aren’t messing around.

Having assembled a rotation headlined by Greinke, Shelby Miller and Patrick Corbin and a batting order anchored by Paul Goldschmidt and A.J. Pollock, this team is all in.

In 2016, the D-backs will be trotting out a squad that has the potential to cause fits for the Dodgers and San Francisco Giants.

The question is whether Arizona mortgaged the franchise’s future for a potentially brief window of opportunity.

In order to snatch Greinke from the Dodgers’ grasp, the team had to dish out a six-year, $206.5 million pact. That’s a ton of years and dollars to hand out to anybody—even a pitcher as supremely talented as Greinke, who is fresh off a season in which he posted a 1.66 ERA.

Here’s a bit of context to explain just how impressive that figure was:

But his new deal will carry Greinke through his age-38 season. As Mark Whicker of the Los Angeles Daily News argued, even the heavy-spending Dodgers and their president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, “can’t be rationally criticized for failing to match” that commitment.

There’s been no shortage of rational criticism for the D-backs’ decision to bring in Miller and minor league left-hander Gabe Speier from the Atlanta Braves in exchange for outfielder Ender Inciarte, 2015 No. 1 pick Dansby Swanson and right-handed pitching prospect Aaron Blair.

ESPN.com’s Keith Law dubbed the acquisition cost “comically high,” noting that Arizona was potentially swapping 18 years of big league control for three seasons of Miller.

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, one major league executive flat-out roasted the move: “Worst trade I’ve ever seen.”

From this early juncture, it’s much too soon to make such an assessment. But one thing is for certain: The D-backs’ offseason of gambling is either going to pay major dividends in the immediate future or cripple the franchise for years to come.

Chicago Cubs

Only a fool would question the wisdom of Theo Epstein.

With that qualification in mind, let’s go ahead and question the wisdom of the Cubs president of baseball operations.

From the stockpile of high-upside position players to the team’s sneaky-good rotation, the Cubs are a rising force. But that doesn’t mean that Epstein is immune to making the rare, yet expensive, misstep or two.

It starts with Ben Zobrist.

The switch-hitter is the official Swiss Army Knife of baseball, but his four-year, $56 million deal could get ugly on the back side.

Both of the final two years of that agreement could be an issue for Chicago. In 2018, when Zobrist will turn 37 in May, the utility man will be making a cool $16 million. The year after that, he’ll rake in $12 million.

While those salaries sound awfully high for a player of that age, the counterargument is that the Cubs will gladly absorb that money if Zobrist helps lead the team to a World Series before then.

It’s the team’s deal for Jason Heyward that looms as a scarier liability.

No one is debating the worth of the 26-year-old’s glove.

The debate is over his worth as a player, as one manager explained to Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated:

The problem with Jason Heyward is that the things you value the most about him now are the things you are not going to have at the back half of the contract: youth and defense. Over time, those only get worse. I would love to have him on a high [average annual value] over a short period of time—give me just his best years—but that’s not going to happen. If I did have him, I would bat him second or fifth, not in the middle. He’s not that kind of hitter. Listen, I get the metrics. I really do. But let’s remember, he’s a corner outfielder. He doesn’t play in the middle. You better love, love, love corner outfield defense to sign him.

Back at the winter meetings, that skipper guessed that Heyward would reel in an eight-year, $144 million payout. The outfielder smashed that prediction, netting an eight-year, $184 haul from the Cubs—with opt-out clauses after the third and fourth seasons to boot.

That’s one expensive No. 2 hitter—especially since so many other prime-time outfielders can’t seem to get so much as a bite on the free-agent market. With New Year’s rapidly approaching, here’s a look at the premier guys capable of patrolling an outfield corner and who remain unaccounted for:

• Yoenis Cespedes
• Chris Davis
• Alex Gordon
• Justin Upton

As the winter wears on, the negotiating power for all those stars just keeps on waning. Ultimately, there’s a real chance that a couple of those players will wind up without a seat in the offseason game of outfield musical chairs. 

As a result, they could be forced to settle for a contract that is just a drop in the bucket compared to what the Cubs guaranteed Heyward.

Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox badly needed an ace when the offseason began.

And the American League East heavyweights checked that bullet point off the organizational to-do list in a big way, inking David Price to a seven-year, $217 million deal.

If that sticker price sounds egregious, that’s probably because it was. Just let Bob Nightengale of USA Today provide the details.

“Price, a native of Murfreesboro, Tenn., was enamored with joining the [St. Louis] Cardinals, who have reached the postseason the last five seasons, with two pennants and a World Series title. Yet, the Red Sox’s offer simply was too strong for him to refuse.”

So, just how strong was too strong?

According to Nightengale, the Red Sox outbid the Redbirds by “at least $30 million.” Even in the absurdly extravagant world that is the free-agent marketplace, that’s a dramatic overpay on the Red Sox’s part. What’s more, the team sweetened the deal by granting Price the power to bolt town after the 2018 season via an opt-out clause.

The Red Sox got their ace. so good on them. But he’s an ace who’s never won a postseason start and whose seven-year deal costs just three million less than what the Giants will be paying Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija combined for 11 years of employment.

Note: All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and MLB.com. All salary information courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts on BaseballProspectus.com.

If you want to talk baseball, find me on Twitter @KarlBuscheck.

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