Kuzul

Another week. Another round of questions about Yoenis Cespedes, Chris Davis and Justin Upton—baseball’s unfortunate free-agent trio.

As Week 10 of the 2015-16 MLB offseason draws to a close, the future remains murky for those prime-time mashers who are still hanging out in a winter purgatory. The good news for one of those guys (and the bad news for another) is that there’s a new five-year offer to report.

There’s also room in the conversation for talk about yet another impact outfielder, whose name just keeps popping up in the trade rumor mill. Plus, with arbitration hearing looming on the horizon, some All-Stars, Cy Youngs and even an MVP are set to cash in.

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For many players already locked into roster spots, spring training is a time to shake off the rust and gear up for the upcoming grind of a 162-game season.

However, for those on the roster bubble, it’s a chance to make an impression that could prove to be the difference between breaking camp on the big league roster and heading back to the minors to start the year.

Most roster decisions boil down to deciding on a final bench piece or relief arm to round out the bullpen, but there are always at least a handful of legitimate position battles at key spots.

The competition for the No. 5 starter job is the most frequent one you’ll see around the league, and that is reflected in the following article, but there are a few other battles to keep any eye on at different positions on the field.

All of that said, ahead is a look at 11 top position battles to watch once spring training begins, as well as an early prediction on who will emerge as the winner.

Note: A player’s name appearing in italics indicates that the player is not on the 40-man roster but will be in camp as a non-roster invitee.

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Thanks to the folks over at MLB.com’s Cut 4, we know that it’s a fact that Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers had better odds of breaking Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak—and that the Mets’ Bartolo Colon had better odds of hitting an inside-the-park home run—than any of us had of winning Wednesday’s $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot.

It would be great if the rumor mill would follow suit and provide us with fancy graphics and odds for the speculation making the rounds to become fact. But such a fictional innovation remains nothing more than a dream.

That’s where we come in, as we try to make sense of all the week’s chatter.

Has a free agent’s arrival guaranteed the departure of the face of a franchise? Will a contender sell low on the trade market to free up some cash? Could two of the biggest bats still available in free agency be to blame for going unsigned? 

We’ll tackle all of that and more in this week’s edition of Fact or Fiction.

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Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion of the Toronto Blue Jays are not only two of the most dangerous hitters in the American League, but they are also two of the headliners of the 2017 MLB free-agent class.

“Joey Bats” is the top right fielder and Encarnacion is the scariest designated hitter, but who are the prime-time guys at all the other spots?

After digging through the recent stats—and placing the most emphasis on 2015 numbers—here’s the breakdown of the top free-agents-to-be at every position on the diamond.

In addition to singling out the biggest stars (and some deserving honorable mentions), we’ve also included logical landings spots based on which clubs have a need (and an opening) at the given positions.

After poring over MLB Trade Rumor.com’s free-agent list, there’s no question that the class of starters is looking awfully weak. However, there are still plenty of game-changing pitchers who will be up for grabs next winter.

*Note: Players with an asterisk either have a team option or an opt-out clause.

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Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson isn’t just the reigning American League MVP—he’s also a man who deserves to get paid.

Looking around the league, there are plenty of MLB stars like Donaldson whose current employers should be racing to lock them up.

The 10 big leaguers who make this list are all arbitration eligible, which means they are one to three seasons away from hitting the free-agent front.

What follows are breakdowns for how each of those contract extensions should be structured. Due to a variety of factors—from the age of the given player to his current contract situation to which agent is representing him—some of these proposed extensions are far more realistic than others.

We’ll use MLBTradeRumors.com’s salary arbitration projections for 2016 as a jumping-off point for determining how much each player is worth. The proposed salaries are also based on the deals that free agents have signed this offseason and how the respective players compare to other similar guys on this list.

From David Price to Zack Greinke to Johnny Cueto, this has been the offseason of the opt-out. With that trend in mind, many of these proposed extensions give the players the opportunity to bolt town long before the full deal is up.

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From the arrival of Zack Greinke at Chase Field to the landing of David Price at Fenway Park, it has been an ambitious offseason for big spenders like the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Boston Red Sox.

The question now becomes whether that offseason ambition will transform into wins on the field in 2016. As we get set for the latest round of “contender” or “pretender,” let’s begin by laying out the ground rules.

Only teams that weren’t in contention in 2015 were eligible for the list. That means there’s no room for the likes of the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees, who have been doing plenty of business but who were both already established in the contender conversation before the offseason began.

In the process of labeling the following five teams, we took two key factors into consideration:

• How successfully each team addressed its most glaring weakness(es)
• The landscape of each team’s division/league

Squads like the D-backs and Red Sox, which have imported prominent players such as Greinke and Price, dominate the list, but there’s also a spot for one team’s whose most consequential additions have been to the coaching staff.

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With so many impact MLB free agents still available—a group that includes Yoenis Cespdes, Wei-Yin Chen, Chris Davis, Yovani Gallardo and Justin Upton—a list of the 10 free agents set to improve their new club the most figures to look drastically different a month from now.

The amount of unsigned talent speaks to the depth of this offseason’s free-agent class, as the players that found their way onto this list will each have a major impact on their new clubs in 2016.

Without the help of a crystal ball, it’s impossible to know exactly how these players will take to their new surroundings. But past performance certainly gives us some insight as to the impact they could have. How they’ll perform over the course of their new contracts is of no concern here—only how they’ll help their teams find success this coming season.

Aside from their individual production, this list also takes into account the impact their arrival could have on other parts of a roster—a big-time starter’s arrival should lead to less work for a team’s bullpen, for example—and the additional depth it helps to create.

Which players from this free-agent class are poised to help their new teams the most? Let’s take a look.

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With a little over a month to go until the start of spring training, we’ve reached the point of the offseason where things are typically kind of boring.

There’s nothing typical about this offseason, though. It started with maybe the deepest class of free agents in MLB history, and a handful of them are still looking for work. There are also some notable trade chips who haven’t been dealt yet. In all, quite a few impact players are still in the mix for new homes.

So, let’s try to find their new homes for them. 

Using a modified version of last month’s ranking of the winter’s remaining targets, we’re going to take a whack at predicting where the 10 best remaining free agents and trade targets will end up. The predictions are based partially on what’s on the rumor mill and partially on imagination.

Before we begin, be warned that we’re not ruling out trade targets staying put. With that said, step into the box whenever you’re ready.

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There was a time when it was tough for young players to rise to All-Star status, but that time is long gone. The 2015 season saw a record 20 players ages 25 and under earn All-Star nods, and it doesn’t take much to guess there’s more where that came from.

So that’s what we’re going to do.

With the 2016 season fast approaching, let’s look at eight prospects who figure to be All-Stars sometime in the next three years. These aren’t the only prospects who have All-Star potential, mind you, but they look like the best bets based on three things:

• Talent: because duh.
• Opportunity: They either already have MLB jobs locked up or are circling clear openings.
• Timing: The sooner a guy arrives in the majors, the more likely he is to be an All-Star by 2018.

With these parameters in mind, we can line up our eight prospects in order from the least sure to the surest thing.

Step into the box whenever you’re ready.

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There’s still a year to go before MLB will announce the 2017 Baseball Hall of Fame class, but it wouldn’t be the worst idea for Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell, Trevor Hoffman and Vladimir Guerrero to start looking into travel arrangements in upstate New York.

After we dug through the numbers—both advanced and otherwise—and examined the recent voting trends, those are the four former big leaguers who have the best odds of making it to the Hall in 2017.

The field also includes the likes of Barry Bonds and Manny Ramirez, both of whom have the numbers to cruise into Cooperstown but have been clouded by links to performance-enhancing drugs.

While the odds are still against those sluggers, the results from the 2016 vote suggest that the landscape could soon change in a big way.

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