Max Scherzer

1. January Will Bring the Max Scherzer Thaw

Spring training is little more than a month away, which means the biggest marquee free agent this side of Jon Lester is about to sign with…

"The two sleepers all along for me were St. Louis and Washington," one American League executive said of Max Scherzer's possible destinations. "They're just guesses. I can see him with the Yankees, too, or going back to Detroit."

Well more than two months have peeled off Major League Baseball’s offseason calendar, a hot-stove season that has been as active and stunning as any in recent memory. 

Yet it is not finished. Two big-money free agents still swim around untouched—Max Scherzer and James Shields—while several clubs with World Series visions remain a player away from being legitimate threats in October.

It's still hard to tell where Max Scherzer is going to sign, but logic says that he'll end up signing with the team that simply has to have him.

According to the latest report, that team is the Detroit Tigers. And if we once again ask our pal logic, it says said report might be right.

While James Shields is a very good starter who can handle pitching at the top of a rotation, he's not quite the prize that fellow free-agent right-hander Max Scherzer is. That's why for all the intrigue, guesswork and speculation over where Shields might wind up, everything in that realm is much more compelling when it comes to Scherzer.

With less than two months until teams report to spring training, it's crunch time for MLB general managers looking to put the finishing touches on their offseason masterpieces.

Several teams are probably already done making major moves. The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres have been extraordinarily busy, and their roster overhauls will be on display as soon as camp gets underway.

Max Scherzer and James Shields still need homes for 2015 and beyond.

The two starting pitchers remain untouched on MLB's free-agent market, waiting to select a new employer before Opening Day. While action predictably intensified once fellow ace Jon Lester made his decision, the other premium hurlers did not budge on expediting the process.

Although the winter meetings allowed numerous MLB teams to cross some names off their holiday shopping lists, plenty of big gifts still await.  Even with superstars like Jon Lester and Pablo Sandoval signing with new teams, the league has yet to see a resulting domino effect, and other top-tier players have yet to find new (or old) teams.

Ever since Guggenheim Baseball Management purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012, the Dodgers have been the most polarizing team in MLB.  They immediately went out and acquired superstars like Adrian G

With some time having gone by and the New Year almost upon us, it has been a strange offseason thus far for the New York Yankees.

Somewhere in a quiet corner of AT&T Park, San Francisco Giants general manager Brian Sabean pushes the record button on an R-2 unit and says, "Help us, Max Scherzer. You're our only hope."