The first pillar of the 2015 MLB offseason has arrived. General managers are currently convening in Boca Raton, Florida, for their annual meetings, which serve as the unofficial beginning of the hot-stove season.
Free agency technically began Friday, but the GM meetings are where deals start to get done. We'll probably see the first major free agent ink his deal over the next few days, though the biggest names will continue to wait out the market.
More critically, GM meetings are where the trade rumors heat up. A vast majority of deals we'll see over the next month or so will have Boca Raton to thank for getting things going. With that in mind, here is a look at some of the most notable rumors.
Rockies to 'Listen' to CarGo Offers?
It's no secret that the Colorado Rockies are in a state of rebuild. They shipped out their franchise's biggest star, Troy Tulowitzki, in a midseason trade that landed them three solid pitching prospects. Their most promising player is 24-year-old Nolan Arenado, who burst onto the scene in 2015 with a 42-homer season that seemingly came out of nowhere.
Stuck somewhere in the middle is Carlos Gonzalez. He is only 30 years old, so there's a scenario in which Gonzalez is still an effective player when the Rockies are competing for the National League West crown again. He rebounded from a lost 2014 campaign by hitting .271/.325/.540 with a career-high 40 homers and 98 runs batted in.
There are two potential schools of thought here. The optimistic would view this as a return to form for Gonzalez, who has had only one bad season despite myriad injury issues. The pessimist would take those numbers and show them to the 29 other MLB teams in an attempt to salvage whatever remains of his trade value.
Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post indicated Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich is taking a middle-of-the-road approach, reporting he'll "listen" to offers on CarGo. That removes the stigma of actively shopping a player but makes it clear he can be had.
Gonzalez is due $37 million over the next two seasons, which at once makes him expensive and low risk. When the Blue Jays added Tulo, they were assuming five more years for a player who has played 150 games just twice in his career. If CarGo doesn't work out, he's essentially a disappointment for one year and dead money the next. It's not an ideal situation, but it is preferable to what will likely be an ugly couple of seasons for Tulo in Toronto.
As it stands, the Rockies should and likely will move Gonzalez at some point this winter.
Padres to Be Active This Winter?
Suffice it to say A.J. Preller is under pressure heading into his second winter as general manager of the San Diego Padres. Armed with a massively expanded budget, Preller made splashy move after splashy move a year ago in hopes of turning San Diego into an instant division contender.
It didn't work. Most of Preller's moves fell on their faces, and the Padres went 74-88. They ranked among baseball's worst in nearly every major offensive category despite adding Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and Wil Myers. They also topped out as middle of the pack in most pitching categories despite bringing in James Shields and Craig Kimbrel.
"Going into the year, I think we had better than a 74-win team," Preller said in October, per Corey Brock of MLB.com. "I do feel like there was talent in the room. Overall, as a whole, it just didn't work. We didn't get guys to play as well as they did at other stops. We never got that group to play at the level we wanted them to all year."
One way Preller seemingly plans to atone for his 2015 missteps is by undoing some of his roster moves. Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune reported the Padres will "listen on just about anyone on the roster." Lin specifically mentioned Shields, who went 13-7 with a 3.91 ERA and 1.33 WHIP during his first season in San Diego.
It'd be a bit strange to move Shields given that he was one of the few Preller moves that worked. He had a marked downturn in some categories, but there's reason to believe 2015 was an outlier. Shields' home run-to-fly ball ratio went up by nearly eight percent, and he set a career high with 3.60 walks per nine innings. Those numbers are so off from his career norms that even a slight mean regression would put him back on solid footing.
Another name making the rounds is catcher Derek Norris, who had a 2.4 WAR in 2015 (per FanGraphs). It seems Preller is shopping only the players who have been effective. Strange strategy.
Rays to Move Loney to Clear 1B Spot?
The Tampa Bay Rays need to make room at a corner infield spot for Richie Shaffer. The former first-round pick belted 26 home runs while splitting his time between Double-A and Triple-A during the 2015 season and has nowhere else to go but Tampa. The Rays might try to keep him in the farm system a bit for service-time purposes, but he's biding time at this point.
One issue: Tampa's corner spots are currently filled. Evan Longoria isn't going anywhere. He's a franchise mainstay, and after a couple of injury-plagued campaigns, he has returned to play at least 160 games in each of the last three seasons.
The other infield spot, however, is being taken up by the fine but replaceable James Loney. The veteran first baseman is a career .285 hitter but brings nothing from a power perspective. His defense has also slipped to the point he was worth a negative-1.3 wins above replacement last season, according to FanGraphs.
Understandably, the Rays would prefer to move on. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported trading Loney is a "key" to bringing Shaffer up from Triple-A. Loney is due $9.6 million in 2016, and the Rays aren't in the business of parking one of their highest-paid players on the bench. At issue is the fact that not many teams are going to be keen on adding a weak-hitting first baseman who doesn't offer much in the way of defensive excellence.
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