Opinion

The Korean Baseball Organization has to be taken seriously.

The country’s premier baseball league’s last two significant imports have both produced at high major league levels, and now a third has the potential to be the best of the group.

Feliz cumpleanos, Big Papi.

The Boston Red Sox have already pulled off the biggest blockbuster trade of the still-young offseason. In so doing, they sacrificed quite a bit of their prospect depth and financial flexibility.

And yet, that might not have been the end of the Red Sox remaking themselves via blockbuster trades. That might have only been the beginning. 

There actually is a fish called a Donaldson Trout. According to a post on the website Trout Fishing Help, it's sometimes called "Super Trout."

So there you have it. A (Josh) Donaldson is a super (Mike) Trout!

I'm guessing that won't end the argument over who the American League's Most Valuable Player should be. I'm guessing this column won't end it.

Something like 99 percent of the rumors in any given MLB offseason don't come true. For the most part, it's all just noise. Dumb, loud, annoying noise.

And yet, that doesn't stop us from wondering "My [insert preferred deity], what if that actually happens?" every time a juicy rumor surfaces. That's just how the game is played.

So, what the heck. Let's play the game.

In the span of eight days, Brandon Crawford became the most decorated San Francisco Giants shortstop in franchise history, and he also became its richest.

Already holding two World Series rings in his pocket, the 28-year-old Crawford added an unexpected Gold Glove award and an expected Silver Slugger trophy within the last week in the same season in which he made his first National League All-Star team.

Joe Maddon entered a den full of untested Cubbies. Now, after his first season at the helm, they're all grown up.

No, Chicago didn't bust its legendary World Series drought. But the Cubs engineered a significant turnaround, snapping a string of five consecutive losing seasons with a 97-win campaign and a return to the postseason.

There is no shortage of talent in the Major League Baseball free-agent pool, and a World Series champion is starting to make some waves in the market.

Ben Zobrist came to the Kansas City Royals in a midseason trade with the Oakland Athletics and was rumored at one point to have both teams from The Big Apple interested him.

The MLB offseason continues to roll along at a rapid pace.

Three players accepted qualifying offers for the first time ever, a huge trade between the Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers went down and that's not even half of the action.

Let's take a look at the latest news around the rumor mill as we hit mid-November. 

Mets Interested in Ben Zobrist

If you can't beat them, steal them, I suppose.

After a relatively slow start, baseball's offseason has kicked into overdrive.

Four notable names—Erick Aybar (Los Angeles to Atlanta), Jeremy Hellickson (Arizona to Philadelphia), Craig Kimbrel (San Diego to Boston) and Andrelton Simmons (Atlanta to Los Angeles)—have been traded over the past week, and if the rumor mill is any indication, that's only the beginning.