Opinion

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Here the winter meetings are, smack in the Washington Nationals' backyard, and this might be where you can look out and see the end of the line for Bryce Harper in the nation's capital.

We all know the total cost for Harper when he becomes a free agent following the 2018 season will exceed that of the White House, the Pentagon and the gross national product of the New York Yankees combined.

The San Francisco Giants' run of even-year championships finally ended in 2016 in large part because their bullpen was cursed. Or to put it slightly more bluntly, just not very good.

All they had to do to solve this was sign the most expensive relief pitcher in Major League Baseball history.

Teams wasted little time in getting down to business on the first day of MLB's annual winter meetings, as Rich Hill and Mark Melancon, two of the higher-profile free agents, came off the board. Hill re-signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers, while Melancon signed on to solidify the back-end of San Francisco's bullpen.

In a baseball year that was about ending droughts, the Washington Nationals had to sit back and wonder why they were left out.

They have a good team. They won 95 games, the third time in the last five years they've won at least that many (no one else has done it more than twice).

All it got them was another chance at October frustration. The Nationals didn't win a postseason series. The Nationals have never won a postseason series.

If the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, had a slogan, it'd be "ready, set, go."

A scant three weeks before Christmas, the New York Yankees signed Matt Holliday for one year and $13 million, per Jon Heyman of Today's Knuckleball. 

I will spare you the painfully obvious holiday/Holliday puns.

It’s fairly easy to write a check. Do you want a free agent on your team? All an executive really needs to do is offer that player a bigger contract than every other team in contention for his services.

The more difficult task for general managers around the game is to identify players who offer an organization great value.

Inevitably, those players are flawed. Otherwise, they would be fielding high-priced offers that would negate the idea that they bring any value. So have an open mind when considering the following choices.

The last time Carlos Beltran was in a Houston Astros uniform, he was punishing baseballs left and right as he led the team deep into the postseason.

It could be deja vu all over again 11 months from now.

Under normal circumstances, a pitcher coming off a major shoulder procedure who posted an 11.81 ERA in extremely limited action the previous season wouldn't be a winter head-turner.

These aren't normal circumstances.

The free-agent shelves are bare, especially in the starting pitcher department. Marquee trade options may require ludicrous expenditures of young talent. 

Enter Tyson Ross. Flawed as he is, he's a name worth following.

The recently signed labor agreement answers so many questions, namely that we’ll have baseball in 2017. But also that free agency is sure to begin in short order.

Over the next several weeks, which include the baseball winter meetings, a flurry of deals should be made—both in free agency and the trade market. But given that there has been little action this offseason, there is so much we don’t know about how the next few weeks might play out.

And, well, this raises a whole bunch of other questions. Let’s go ahead and try to get some answers.