MLB

Veteran infielder Luis Valbuena is still searching for a landing spot in free agency after slugging 66 home runs over the past four years.

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How much juice can the National Baseball Hall of Fame hold? We're going to find out.

The sea change in the voting for the Hall of Fame can't be ignored. It first became apparent when Mike Piazza, long suspected of needing performance-enhancing drugs to slug more homers than any other catcher, got into Cooperstown with 83 percent of the vote in 2016.

Now the revolution is projected to continue in 2017.

Some of the league's most dynamic offensive players call first base home.

Miguel Cabrera, Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, Joey Votto and Freddie Freeman are all elite-level sluggers and true superstars in the sport.

You won't find any of those players on the following list, though.

Ahead we'll take a look at the 10 first basemen who, for a variety of reasons, will be worth keeping an eye on this spring.

Brandon Phillips is apparently still not ready to leave the Cincinnati Reds. 

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the second baseman used his no-trade clause to block a potential deal to the Atlanta Braves in November.

The Cleveland Indians officially introduced prized free-agent signing Edwin Encarnacion on Thursday.

It's not easy to do what the New York Yankees have done. It's even tougher to do what they have to do next. 

OK, so the 2016-2017 MLB offseason hasn't been the wild spending bonanza that last winter's offseason was. But as evidence that it hasn't been all bad, I submit 15 contracts worth at least $20 million.

How about we pass the time by ranking them?

Let's go from the worst to the best. Or, put another way, from the biggest bust to the biggest steal. This is going to require weighing a multitude of factors, but they can be boiled down to a couple basic questions:

We're several cold, soggy weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. Baseball remains an abstraction—a distant, beautiful dream.

Still, it's not too early to gaze through the winter haze toward a few key spring position battles and make some premature predictions.

Starting pitcher Tyson Ross is one of the marquee free agents remaining on the market, and Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reported he met with the Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs. 

Continue for updates.

Colorado Rockies pitcher Chad Bettis has been declared cancer-free after a November surgery removed a malignant testicle.

"I'm feeling great. Got an early Christmas present. Doctor said I was cancer-free. Ready to push forward," Bettis said on MLB Network Radio on Wednesday.