Preview/Prediction

The start of spring training is still a few weeks away, but it's never too soon to start planning for this year's fantasy baseball draft.

Hitting on your early round picks and anchoring your roster with superstar talent is important, but more times than not, it's the late-round sleeper picks that prove to be the difference when it comes to contending for a league title.

With spring training drawing near, we're all mainly excited for the baseball. It's our dear friend, and it's been too long since we last hung out.

But don't forget about the business, folks. Spring training always brings us a few last-minute deals, and we're here to take a whack at predicting some of the big ones that will go down this spring.

This offseason, Major League Baseball clubs have spent roughly $2.5 billion on free agents and pulled off a handful of big-ticket trades on the side.

Well, as much as we hate to be the bearers of bad vibrations, some of this excitement is inevitably going to result in buyer's remorse. There will be busts, and we're here to try to sniff them out ahead of time.

We've reached that point in the offseason where the closer we get to spring training, the slower time seems to move. 

Most teams have their rosters set and are focused on adding organizational depth, signing fringe major league talent to minor league deals, moves that barely force the rumor mill to twitch, much less pick up speed. Thankfully, there are enough clubs still in need of a significant piece to keep things churning.

Julio Urias and Raul Adalberto Mondesi are not just two of the top prospects in the game, but also the kind of rising talents who will make fans stop this spring and say, "Whoa, who was that?"

The list that follows is flooded with players of that ilk. Many of the head-turning farmhands who made the grade are the No. 1 prospect in their respective system, but that wasn't the case for everyone.

Some of the players who earned this distinction are here because they have a big-time, can't-miss tool—from an electric pitch to prime-time pop to superspeed.

Kyle Schwarber and Mookie Betts are the kind of phenoms who just aren't playing around.

In 2015, the Chicago Cubs' masher and the Boston Red Sox's spark plug demonstrated that they're the type of players who have the tools—and who have drawn the praise of coaches and execs—to be more than just your run-of-the-mill stars.

We are still a few weeks from the start of spring training, and a couple of months away from Opening Day, but it's never too early to take a crack at predicting how all 30 MLB teams' Opening Day rosters will shake out.

Obviously, the inevitable injuries, surprise performances and whatever signings and trades that take place this spring will shake things up between now and the beginning of the regular season.

The weekend-long Cubs Convention wouldn't start until Friday, but Chicago Cubs fans were already on high alert at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Chicago on Tuesday night.

The former fan favorite was bundled up in an attempt to counter the freezing Chicago winter, but that didn't stop more than a few fans from recognizing and approaching him.

Dexter Fowler, Ian Desmond, Yovani Gallardo and Howie Kendrick have a lot in common.

They're all quality big leaguers, and they're all unemployed. That second similarity is a product of that nasty draft-pick compensation they're lugging around after declining qualifying offers from their old employers.

With MLB spring training still two weeks away, now is not the time for big league skippers to be writing in their lineups with a Sharpie.

But it's also not too soon to break out the No. 2 pencils and sketch out the batting orders for all 30 major league squads.

In order to project how all these lineups will shake out, we took a look back at the iterations that each manager chose in 2015 and also considered how the new free-agent and trade acquisitions fit into the mix.