Rankings/List

It's inevitable.

There will be more than one offseason transaction that won't work out in 2015. It happens every season, with B.J. Upton, Shin-Soo Choo and Josh Hamilton as recent examples.

It's a phenomenon that no team is immune to. Baseball is a game of failure, ultimately leading to larger fluctuations in production than in any other professional sport. You pay a player based off of what he's done, but those former numbers are often fool's gold in terms of future value. 

The MLB free-agent market now consists of Max Scherzer, James Shields and everyone else. But beyond Scherzer and Shields, there are still a handful of valuable players to be had. And as the market gets thinner, those assets will only become increasingly valuable as teams try to fill their remaining roster voids.

Projecting prospects is as much a baseball pastime as hot dogs, brush-back heaters and PEDs.

Debates ensue, disappointment is ever present and the occasional can’t-miss gem actually doesn’t miss. So is the way of the prospect world, one filled with teenagers and young 20-somethings full of unpredictability in a game that relies heavily on seeing the future.

A handful of Major League Baseball teams are scheduled to have pitchers and catchers report Feb. 18, which means only one thing: We're barely a month out from the official start of spring training.

That makes right about now as good a time as any to update the winners and losers of this active offseason so far.

Now that it's mid-January and spring training is just about a month away, the hot stove has started to settle down, at least a little.

Sure, there's still a pair of big-name free-agent arms available in Max Scherzer and James Shields, and a trade or two tends to come to fruition every few days. But for the most part, the wave of transactions reached its peak in December.

The 2014-2015 MLB offseason is coming down the homestretch, but there are still more than a few things to be sorted out between now and the time pitchers and catchers start to report to spring training roughly a month from now.

Spring training can be stressful. 

That's definitely the case for outfielders on the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox, as there are simply way too many players and not enough spots in the respective lineups. 

The Pittsburgh Pirates system took a hit last year with Jameson Taillon’s Tommy John surgery, but fellow right-handers Tyler Glasnow and Nick Kingham picked up the slack in his absence, with the former posting video-game numbers in the Florida State League.

Some MLB executives just never seem to leave the office.

Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein both fit that description. While their respective clubs have been among the busiest in baseball this winter, it's worth remembering that off-field activity doesn't always translate to on-field success. 

The Arizona Diamondbacks are feeling optimistic after an active offseason. Change was certainly expected following a season in which the D-Backs finished 64-98—worst in MLB.

With the addition of young pitching and Cuban slugger Yasmany Tomas, the 2015 team has a new feel to it.