Opinion

I don't mean to alarm anyone, but the Major League Baseball offseason is already one month old.

Or just about, anyway. Certainly, enough time has passed for us to look back and take stock of what's happened. What better way to do that than with a list of the biggest winners and losers of the offseason?

We're going to look at four of each, which range from players and teams that have done well to players and teams that haven't done well. And while this list won't really be a countdown of any sort, we can tease that the biggest loser of them all is an entire market.

The New York Mets have a surplus of arms, to put it mildly. They could dip into it to address their needs on offense. Or they could double down and defend their National League crown with a young, burgeoning super rotation.

Here's a rough estimate of how many talented starting pitchers are available this winter: like, a million. And for virtually all of them, the prices are pretty steep.

Save for one apparent exception. Let's just call him Carlos Carrasco.

Because, you know, that's his name.

Last winter, the Washington Nationals signed the best pitcher on the free-agent market and proceeded to have a massively disappointing season.

So what should they do this winter? Why, sign the best pitcher on the free-agent market, of course—a fellow by the name of David Price.

Here's where you raise your hand and mutter something about the definition of insanity. Fair enough. But let's think about this for a minute.

The Miami Marlins do so many things wrong that it's easy to start believing they do everything wrong.

It's just not true.

Look at Dee Gordon. The Marlins made a great deal last December to get him from the Los Angeles Dodgers. If all goes well, maybe they can follow it up with a great deal this December to prove they want to keep Gordon long term.

The end of November is an interesting time in Major League Baseball, as it's a time when rumors begin to simmer heading into the winter meetings in two weeks. 

There will also be an overabundance of rumors that are either false or useless. Hearing that teams are "willing to listen" on a random player says nothing because a general manager will take a phone call about any player, even if there's no intention of moving that player. 

A few years back, a general manager of a limited-budget team shook his head while talking about the New York Yankees.

"Sometimes it seems like they're trying to operate like us," he said. "If we had their money, we wouldn't operate like us."

For teams on the hunt for a stud first baseman, Chris Davis of the Baltimore Orioles looms about as large on the offseason market as he does in real life. If a team wants to go for it at first base, it'll pay him the big bucks.

Or, it could trade for Freddie Freeman. In fact, it probably should trade for Freddie Freeman.

If the Kansas City Royals taught the world anything in going to the World Series in 2014 and winning the Commissioner's Trophy in 2015, it's that defense matters. Like, a lot.

Apparently, the Los Angeles Angels were paying very close attention.

A big part of assessing the long list of free agents each year is identifying the players who stand a good chance of bouncing back. In the past, we’ve seen plenty of “risky” free agents go on to successfully prove their worth.