AL East

Are you sitting there wondering why the New York Yankees haven't seemed interested in building for 2016 this winter?

Here's a potential spoiler: It might be because they have their eyes on what's coming after 2018.

Twenty-four years after he played his final game for the organization, the Boston Red Sox announced Monday they will retire Wade Boggs' No. 26 in May.

Boggs was overwhelmed upon hearing the news:

Strictly going off their last four seasons, the Boston Red Sox have a 25 percent chance of finishing in first place in 2016 and a 75 percent chance of finishing in last place.

But in the words of Han Solo, never tell me the odds. Not those odds, anyway. The 2016 Red Sox are custom-designed to avoid the fate of the 2012, 2014 and 2015 clubs, and we're here to promise they will.

The Toronto Blue Jays signed veteran pitcher Brad Penny to a minor league deal Thursday with an invitation to spring training, according to ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick. The team has not released the figures of the contract.

According to Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca, the deal includes a player opt-out option at the end of spring training.

It was Tuesday, Sept. 1, when they all filed into the Fenway Park baseball conference room: pro scouts, amateur scouts, administrators—all for one of those change-of-command meetings that can lead to sleepless nights and bottles of Tums.

Dave Dombrowski, hired a mere two weeks earlier as Boston's incoming president of baseball operations, walked in to conduct the meeting and, as he did, carried with him a couple of the thickest notebook binders that maybe had ever been seen in Fenway.

The Baltimore Orioles agreed to a deal with star South Korean left fielder Hyun-soo Kim on Wednesday, pending a physical, according to the Baltimore Sun's Dan Connolly.

$217 million...for a freaking pitcher?!? Now I know I've seen it all.

After a half-century of baseball, blizzards, college students and traffic, my bucket list is nearly complete. I've even seen Pablo Sandoval leg out a triple.

Happy 50th birthday to me: I am Boston's famed Citgo sign.

On this week in 1965, my then-neon red and blue hues first lit the sky above Kenmore Square. I have been a fixture for Red Sox fans, Bostonians and visitors from everywhere ever since.

The New York Yankees have taken a second base situation that impressed nobody and have addressed it with a trade that doesn't seem to be satisfying everybody.

But if you're among those who are on the fence, rest assured. The Yankees have had worse ideas.

For years, the New York Yankees won the winter the traditional way.

They bought it.

The Toronto Blue Jays have reportedly hired Ross Atkins as their new general manager with hopes to make another run at the American League pennant, according to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle.