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With the MLB offseason in full swing, the hot stove seemingly provides us with a handful of new rumors to discuss on a daily basis.

At this point in the offseason, prior to the winter meetings, the bulk of the rumors revolve around players who could potentially be available on the trade market as opposed to free agents and where they might wind up signing.

That will all change in a few weeks when the league converges on Nashville, Tennessee, for the annual four-day circus that is the winter meetings. But for now, we have plenty to discuss from the early stages of the offseason.

All of that said, what follows is a look at one notable rumor currently out there for each MLB team and the odds on whether that rumor will turn out to be true (in a few cases, the most notable speculation will be covered).

Note: No rumor was given worse than 100-1 odds, so that can be viewed as the “not going to happen” of odds in this case.

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Early in MLB‘s offseason, the rumor mill will run wild with possibilities. Some will foreshadow future maneuvers, but others will remain in “What if?” purgatory.

A general manager isn’t doing his due diligence by hanging up on an inquiry. Even an untouchable superstar has his price if the other side is willing to overpay. Many speculated studs on the hot stove will stay put, but it’s usually worth a conversation.

This is also the time to play armchair GM and assemble possible trades. One such move, given life last week, was already discarded. Yet that doesn’t mean both players will stay put.

Let’s examine the league’s latest chatter as offseason activity intensifies.

Heavy Interest in Dee Gordon

When the Los Angeles Dodgers dealt Dee Gordon to the Miami Marlins last winter, it looked like they sold high on a career year. Not quite. The second baseman hit .333 with 58 steals and 88 runs scored for Miami, giving the downtrodden franchise a rare win.

After a disappointing 71-91 season for Miami, other organizations are calling in hopes of the frugal franchise opening the gates on another fire sale. According to the Boston Globe‘s Nick Cafardo, eager suitors are knocking on the door:  

The Marlins have a few players that other teams are interested in, including center fielder Marcell Ozuna, who could be dealt for starting pitching. But Gordon has received a ton of interest, being a second baseman who can hit as well as run. The Marlins have listened, but it would have to be a huge deal in which front-line, controllable pitching would come in return. Seems unlikely.

While Gordon will draw a raise in arbitration, he remains under team control. Back in August, CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman reported the team’s intentions of negotiating an extension this offseason. That doesn’t sound like a team worried about a letdown, even if there’s reason for concern. 

Gordon won the National League batting title with help from a .383 batting average on balls in play, MLB’s third-highest clip among qualified hitters. Some regression to the mean will bring the number down to a more reasonable rate, which will further expose his 3.8 walk percentage.

Then again, the same was said heading into 2015. Although the old saying claims nobody can steal first base, he snatches up infield hits few other speedsters can beat out. If he falls to his .293 career average, he’s still an above-average option.

Everybody has his price, so Miami should listen to offers in case anyone overpays for his .333 average. Given his lack of plate discipline and power, the club probably won’t receive a young, high-caliber ace in return.

Yankees Want Starting Pitching for Brett Gardner

Rumors spread faster in the city that never sleeps, so Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News opened up a giant can of worms by discussing the New York Yankees flipping outfielder Brett Gardner to the Chicago Cubs for middle infielder Starlin Castro:

The initial report spurred an avalanche of speculation and opinions, but this rumor didn’t live long. Heyman shot down the pairing:

Feinsand updated his story to sing a different tune, joining Heyman in stating the Yankees’ interest in acquiring a starting pitcher rather than a second baseman.

“A source said if the Yankees are to trade Gardner, it would likely be for a starting pitcher,” Feinsand wrote. “The Indians have reportedly shown interest in Gardner as well, setting up a possible deal to send a pitcher—Carlos Carrasco, perhaps—to the Bronx.”

An overlooked mainstay in New York’s lineup, Gardner hit .259/.343/.399 with 16 homers, 20 steals and a 2.6 fWAR. While the 32-year-old is no longer a major menace on the bases or a premier defender, his stellar batting eye and growing power preserve his status as an outfield fixture.

Any suitors, however, should fear the lefty’s newly gained muscle waning outside of Yankee Stadium, whose short right-field fence is perfectly tailored for his line-drive swing. Expecting Carrasco, a 28-year-old hurler under team control, is far too ambitious after his 216-strikeout season.

While Castro, 25, is far younger than Gardner, he has failed to reach his potential with fluctuating results. Last season, he recorded a .296 on-base percentage, causing the Cubs to bench him during the season. A right-handed hitter with a 54.1 ground-ball percentage can’t properly utilize Yankee Stadium, so the Yankees are wise to leave this exchange as nothing more than talk-radio fodder.

Astros Pursuing Top Closers

The Houston Astros cleaned up their organization sooner than expected, snapping a nine-season playoff drought and pushing the Kansas City Royals to the limit in the American League Division Series.

In six playoff games, Houston’s bullpen surrendered 14 runs through 17.1 innings. It also must replace or re-sign Tony Sipp, who registered a 1.99 ERA last season. As a result, the Astros are eyeing top late-inning arms in hopes of making a major splash, per ESPN’s Jayson Stark.

According to Cafardo, Andrew Miller tops their wish list, and Pittsburgh Pirates closer Mark Melancon is also on their radar. In his first season of a four-year deal with the Yankees, Miller notched a 2.04 ERA and 100 strikeouts through 61.2 innings. 

New York has another shutdown reliever in Dellin Betances, but he was on the roster when they signed Miller last winter. Per Feinsand, the Yankees would move the 30-year-old lefty, but they’re not desperate to do so:

After years of rebuilding, Houston showed a willingness to leverage its deep farm system on the trade market last summer. To sustain an unexpected run, it traded prospects to land Carlos Gomez, Scott Kazmir and Mike Fiers before the trade deadline. Now it wants a bullpen ace, who would probably supplant veteran Luke Gregerson as the ninth-inning man.

All advanced statistics are courtesy of FanGraphs.com.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

From Zack Greinke to Aroldis Chapman, both the MLB free-agent market and the trade block are stocked with impact arms.

For now, no one knows just where exactly those stars will end up. However, after considering team needs for 2016 and taking into account all the latest buzz, here are some surprise destinations that make sense as potential landing spots.

The list that follows includes the top five free agents from Bleacher Report’s big board and the two most-prominent names on the trade front. Pitchers dominate the list, but there’s also room for a few big hitters who should make a big difference for their new employers in 2016.

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This MLB offseason has already been a busy one, and we are still a few weeks from the Dec. 7-10 winter meetings, which is when things traditionally heat up around the league.

Three prospects who rank in the top 100 in the league, as rated by MLB.com, have already been on the move in a pair of blockbuster deals.

The Boston Red Sox sent center fielder Manuel Margot (No. 25) and shortstop Javier Guerra (No. 76) to the San Diego Padres in exchange for Craig Kimbrel, while left-hander Sean Newcomb (No. 19) was shipped from the Los Angeles Angels to the Atlanta Braves in the Andrelton Simmons deal.

That early action raises the question: What other top young talents could find themselves traded this offseason?

What follows is a look at seven top prospects who could be linchpins of potential blockbuster deals if their teams winds up pulling the trigger on a major trade.

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There wasn’t much in the way of surprises when it came to the recipients of baseball’s major individual awards in 2015—aside from a National League Cy Young Award race that could have gone to either Los Angeles’ Zack Greinke or Chicago’s Jake Arrieta, the winners were who we thought they’d be.

So while it’s incredibly early, what better time to take a look at how the races for the 2016 season might look?

While there are always three finalists for every award, we’ll look at a five-player field of contenders for the three big ones—the Cy Young, Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year awards—in each league and predict which of those five players will walk away with the hardware.

Who stands to win big in 2016? Let’s take a look.

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While there have been a few significant moves already since the World Series ended almost three weeks ago, things generally don’t get going until the MLB winter meetings, which are set for Dec. 7-10 in Nashville, Tennessee.

There figures to be no shortage of blockbuster trades and notable free-agent signings during that four-day span, but before that happens, let’s make some predictions.

What follows is a look at the top 25 free agents and trade targets on the market and predictions from five of our top MLB writers on where they will land.

These five writers made up our panel of prognosticators:

• Danny Knobler, MLB Lead Writer
• Joel Reuter, National MLB Columnist
• Zachary Rymer, MLB Lead Writer
• Jacob Shafer, National MLB Columnist
• Anthony Witrado, National MLB Columnist

Having five writers weigh in gave us plenty of different opinions, and there was actually only one consensus among the 25 players.

It will be fun to look back in a few months to see who got the most picks right, but for now, here’s our best guess at how this year’s free-agent and trade markets will unfold this winter.

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Buckle up, folks. For if the first two weeks of baseball’s offseason are any indication, the Hot Stove League is going to take us on a long, strange trip this winter.

Trades, and not free-agent signings, have dominated both the rumor mill and transaction sheets, which is certainly surprising when you consider the slew of high-profile names that are currently unsigned. Then again, we are still very early in the offseason. Things are sure to pick up from here on both fronts.

Has the trade of one elite closer changed the thinking of a team (or teams) looking to unload its own All-Star option in the ninth inning? Will a postseason hero deliver the only team he’s ever known a hometown discount? Are budget constraints forcing a contender’s hand?

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

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So, here’s something you may not be aware of: Major League Baseball’s award season does not actually end with the naming of the Most Valuable Players on Thursday.

Nope. Not anymore. On Friday evening, baseball will take a page out of Monty Python and try something completely different with the MLB Esurance Awards.

This is a new idea that baseball only announced in mid-September. The Esurance MLB Awards are meant to be a bit more fun and playful than the four major awards, as baseball asked voters to vote on things like top highlights, moments and social media topics in addition to the top players and bosses from the 2015 season. For each category, there was a range of finalists to choose from.

We know that the voting closed on November 13, and that it was carried out by media members, front office personnel, retired MLB players, members of the Society for American Baseball Research and, last but not least, fans. But because that’s a pretty wide range of voters, there’s really no telling who (and what) the awards are going to go to when they’re revealed on MLB Network at 8 p.m. ET on Friday.

But in the interests of might-as-wellery and what-the-heckery, let’s take a run through the awards anyway and venture our best guesses.

Best Players and Bosses

Best Major Leaguer: Bryce Harper, Washington Nationals

Best Everyday Player: Bryce Harper, Washington Nationals

Best Starting Pitcher: Jake Arrieta, Chicago Cubs

Best Rookie: Kris Bryant, Chicago Cubs

Best Defensive Player: Kevin Kiermaier, Tampa Bay Rays

Best Breakout Player: Xander Bogaerts, Boston Red Sox

Best Bounceback Player: Matt Harvey, New York Mets

Best Major Leaguer, Postseason: Wade Davis, Kansas City Royals

Best Manager: Ned Yost, Kansas City Royals

Best Executive: Dayton Moore, Kansas City Royals

If we can assume that the voters were watching the same baseball season we were, then some of these awards are easy calls. That certainly goes for the first two, as it’s hard to imagine how Bryce Harper could lose either the Best Major Leaguer or the Best Everyday Player award. 

Harper is up against some stiff competition, to be sure, including Mike Trout, who had another Mike Trout-y season. But in 2015, Harper was to hitting baseballs what Jimi Hendrix was to plucking guitar strings in the late ’60s. All he did was hit .330 with 42 home runs, and he also led MLB in on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS. After all that, here’s guessing there aren’t enough Jonathan Papelbons in the world to deny him his just desserts. 

The Best Rookie award is also probably a one-horse race. AL Rookie of the Year Carlos Correa was awesome, but National League Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant was even better in OPS’ing .858 with 26 homers to lead all rookies.

And yeah, Bryant also deserves bonus points for hitting the longest dinger of 2015.

The toughest category is probably Best Starting Pitcher, where you can find Zack Greinke and his 1.66 ERA, Clayton Kershaw and his 301 strikeouts and Jacob deGrom with his awesome regular-season and postseason performances.

But NL Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta is the likely favorite. He dominated in every which way in posting 22 wins and a 1.77 ERA, and he had us all amazed when he went full god mode in the second half.

Elsewhere, Xander Boagerts should benefit from being one of the only players in the Breakout Player category who wasn’t already good before 2015. Alex Rodriguez should win Bounceback Player, but that would require people to actually like him. As such, things lean toward fellow New York standout/Batman wannabe Matt Harvey. And in a year where there wasn’t much sustained postseason dominance, it stands out that Wade Davis struck out 18 in 10.2 scoreless innings.

The one award that could probably go to anyone is the Best Defensive Player, but it’s hard to bet against Kevin Kiermaier. He robbed about a million hits with his play in center field throughout 2015, and it’s hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that one of his throws was clocked at 100 miles per hour:

Rounding things out are Best Manager and Best Executive. The former could go to either of the Manager of the Year winners, Texas Rangers skipper Jeff Banister and Chicago Cubs skipper Joe Maddon, and one can imagine the latter going to Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein, Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow or now-former Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos. 

The advantage that Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost and general manager Dayton Moore have, however, is that the voting for these awards extended beyond the conclusion of the postseason. Winning the World Series tends to boost one’s reputation, you know.

Anyway, that takes care of this particular section of the awards. Let us now get into the fun stuff, beginning with the top highlights of 2015.

Best Highlights

Best Play, Offense: Jose Bautista’s Huge ALDS Home Run

Best Play, Defense: Josh Donaldson Goes Flying Into the Stands

Best Moment: Todd Frazier’s Home Run Derby Walk-Off

Best Performance: Max Scherzer’s Second No-Hitter

Best Call, TV: Len Kasper on Kris Bryant

Best Call, Radio: Greg Brown on Andrew McCutchen

Full disclosure: I had no idea how to pick winners for these categories from an objective viewpoint. So instead, I went full gonzo and said, “Screw it! [Thing X] was awesome, so I hope it wins [Award Y].”

Even then, only one of these was an easy call. That would be Max Scherzer’s October 3 no-hitter against the New York Mets, in which he struck out 17 and walked nobody. In addition to being the better of the two no-hitters he threw in 2015, it was the best performance of 2015 and one of the best pitching performances of all time, period.

All the others were tough, but it’s hard to deny Todd Frazier and Josh Donaldson for Best Moment and Best Play, Defense. The 2015 Home Run Derby was the most exciting derby in years, and it ended on an awesome note when Frazier, the hometown hero, won it on a walk-off. And of all the great defensive plays that occurred throughout 2015, Donaldson’s is the most likely to have lasting power.

Because, seriously, the Son of Donald made Derek Jeter’s 2004 catch look like a chump:

Can you think of any truly memorable calls from 2015? As in, anything along the lines of Vin Scully’s “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!” for Kirk Gibson in 1988?

Yeah, me neither. But Len Kasper had an awesome in-the-moment call for Bryant’s first career walk-off homer, and Greg Brown decided that overkill is underrated when he responded to Andrew McCuchen’s 14th-inning walk-off against the St. Louis Cardinals in July by shouting: “You can raise the Jolly Roger, and call it maybe the best all time in Pittsburgh! What a game!”

This brings us to the year’s Best Play, Offense, where there were a lot of good ones to choose from. In addition to Bryant’s and McCutchen‘s walk-offs, there was Alex Gordon’s game-tying homer off Jeurys Familia in Game 1 of the World Series and Kyle Schwarber’s Schwarberian clout in Game 4 of the NLDS.

But of all the big offensive plays of the 2015 season, it’s hard to beat Joey Bats’ earth-shaking home run in Game 5 of the American League Division Series:

This play. THIS. PLAY. Let’s break it down:

1. Huge Moment: Check
2. Huge Dinger: Check
3. Crowd Going Crazy: Check
4. Legendary Bat Flip: Check

Yup, methinks Bautista’s home run is one we’re going to be talking about for a long time.

In fact, we’re not even finished talking about it in this space.

Fan Experience

Best Social Media Personality: David Price

Best Social Media Post: #MiniBautista

Best Trending Topic: Ichiro Takes the Mound

Best MLB Interview: Josh Collmenter’s Travelling Hands

Best Celebrity Fan: Jerry Seinfeld

Best Video Board Moment: Vin Scully’s Return

Best Fan Catch: The Trout Net

Best Player-Fan Interaction: Andrew McCutchen Is the Best

As we discussed, there are many layers of awesome to Bautista’s huge Game 5 dinger. One that didn’t emerge until after the fact, however, was what was going on in the left field stands at the time.

Right before the crack of the bat, a young Joey Bats lookalike created social media gold:

That young man is named Oscar Wood, and his perfectly timed Joey Bats impression is an easy choice for Best Social Media Post. Yes, even better than Dee Gordon calling Giancarlo Stanton out on his facepalm-worthy Kit Kat game.

Elsewhere in the topic of social media, it’s a sham that none of the choices for Best Trending Topic had anything to do with Bartolo Colon doing, well, anything. But Ichiro Suzuki pitching was a good one, as the surrealness of a future Hall of Famer toeing the slab was not lost on the Twitterverse.

As for baseball’s Best Social Media Personality, you can take your pick. The Cubs probably have the best of MLB’s 30 Twitter accounts, and Chris Archer and Marcus Stroman are two of the Philosopher Kings of baseball Twitter.

But it’s hard to beat David Price. The ace left-hander is probably the most active and the most open MLB player on Twitter, and he can have fun with everything from video game squabbles to, um, poots. Also, it’s because of his Twitter account that most everyone wants their own Astro:

You can take your pick with most of the other categories, too, but I’ll stand by my picks.

Gio Gonzalez playing the “meow game” and Stephen Vogt’s Matt Foley impression were great, but the originality of Josh Collmenter’s and Trevor Cahill’s “travelling hands” gimmick (see above) is worthy of a Best MLB Interview award.

Most celebrity fans are lame, but Jerry Seinfeld deserves the Best Celebrity Fan award based on his Yoenis Cespedes tweet alone. As for Best Video Board Moment, the announcement of Scully’s return wins pretty much by default. For Best Player-Fan Interaction, nothing warms the heart like McCutchen making the day of two young superfans.

You’re free to argue all these, but there’s no arguing the winner for Best Fan Catch. After all, this cannot be beaten:

Was there a high degree of difficulty on that catch? No, not really.

But, come on. If C-3PO had accompanied the guy with the Trout Net to the game, he would have told him he had a higher probability of successfully navigating an asteroid field than of actually catching a dinger off Trout’s bat. Much less a grand slam.

Anyway, that does it for me telling you who will/should win the Esurance MLB Awards. We’ll find out the actual winners on Friday night, when watching MLB do something original could actually be fun.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Attempting to replace top MLB free agents like Zack Greinke and David Price is not an enviable task. For teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays, doing just that is on the docket this winter.

What follows are predictions for how the Dodgers, Blue Jays and others will account for the potential loss of impact free agents like Greinke and Price. The list includes the top 15 free agents on this offseason’s market, as ranked on the Bleacher Report big board.

Some teams will use the departure of a star free agent as a chance to promote from within. Others squads will be forced to dip into the trade and free-agent fronts to make up for those losses. And some teams, like the Dodgers, might not have any choice but to take out their checkbooks and spend.

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While Bryce Harper is a stone-cold lock to run away with the National League MVP honors, it’s not easy to forecast the outcomes for many of the 2015 MLB award races.

After sifting through the stats from the season that was and examining the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballots from recent campaigns, what follows are predictions for final vote totals for the three finalists in each race.

Before getting started with the predictions, the voting process needs to be broken down. For each award, 30 voters cast ballots. As will be laid out in the slides that follow, first-place, second-place and third-place votes (and so on) are attached to different point values for different awards.

With those rules in place, let’s predict which stars will win in landslides, like Harper, and which big names will be involved in fierce races.

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