Rankings/List

In life, and in sports, nearly everyone experiences prolonged periods of both success and failure. Of course, the 2014 sports year was far from different, as fans were treated to some truly memorable performances, of both the good and bad sort.

Madison Bumgarner, for example, had a downright iconic year, establishing himself as one of baseball’s all-time greats with the type of postseason pitching we’d never seen before.

The MLB free-agent market is getting light, really light. 

Max Scherzer and James Shields still headline the class of arms, but as far as position players go, there's Melky Cabrera and not a whole lot else. What follows is a post-winter meetings re-ranking of the top 25 MLB free agents. 

After starting out slow on Monday and then building to a magnificent crescendo by mid-day Thursday, Major League Baseball's winter meetings are over.

Now that the flurry—nay, absolute avalanche—of signings and trades in San Diego are complete, here's the question: Are you all caught up on the transaction action?

After days of wheeling and dealing at Major League Baseball’s annual winter meetings, general managers and scouting directors will cap the week with the Rule 5 draft on Thursday, Dec. 11.

Following the World Series, every team faced a late-November deadline to set their respective 40-man rosters so as to identify the prospects left unprotected for the December draft.

With the MLB winter meetings starting recently, the number of rumors around the game has skyrocketed. It is all quite consuming, actually.

Major League Baseball’s annual winter meetings are nearly upon us, with the events to be held on Dec. 8-11 in San Diego, California.

With front-office personnel and executives present from all 30 teams, the winter meetings typically produce both high-profile free-agent signings and blockbuster trades. And with every team evaluating their rosters for the 2015 season, prospects are often the deciding factor when it comes to an offseason deal.

Major League Baseball's offseason is more than a month old, but there's no shortage of rumors and speculation—and questions—around a number of free agents and trade candidates, as well as teams' objectives and plans of attack.

Some of the latest center on the plans of the deep-pocketed Los Angeles Dodgers, the fallout in Oakland from the Josh Donaldson trade and what Chase Headley is worth on the open market.

Although they usually don’t feature the same combination of big-ticket prospects and all-around depth as the Arizona Fall League, the various international winter leagues at least offer those of us going through offseason prospect withdrawal a temporary fix.

From top to bottom, the NL East is ripe with riveting offseason storylines. I will be taking over as a virtual general manager over the next few slides in hopes of addressing each team's most glaring weakness with a potential offseason move.

The Washington Nationals remain the clear favorites in the division, but questions linger after another postseason disappointment. Would another dependable bullpen arm strengthen their cause? 

With the winter meetings beginning Sunday in San Diego, the trade talk around MLB is going to reach a fever pitch soon enough (not that there aren’t a bevy of rumors currently making their way around Twitter).

To that end, here are three MLB trade scenarios based on actual need and published rumors from the last week.