Written by Grant Brisbee at SBNation.com
It’s the Winter Meetings, everyone! Or, as I like to call them, the Almost Winter, Yet Still Fall, Don’t Be A Lawyer Meetings. This is where team representatives, agents, and journalists like to huddle under fluorescent lights powerful enough to cook a rotisserie chicken and decide the future of baseball.
What will happen in these Winter Meetings? Big moves. Stunning moves. Expected moves. Lots of moves. This is likely to be the most active week of the offseason, with a simple free agent signing knocking down an entire row of dominoes for 15 teams. There are sellers, buyers, not-surers, and everything in between.
If you’re looking for a preview, you found this by accident, and it will have to do. What will happen at the 2016 Winter Meetings? We have guesses.
Most active team of the Winter Meetings
The Nationals have home-field advantage, which means they get the final chance to top every offer in the bottom of the ninth. At least, that would make sense. What’s the point of hosting a Winter Meetings if that’s not true?
But they’ll sign Mark Melancon unless they trade for Andrew McCutchen unless theytrade for Chris Sale unless they do all three. When there’s this much chatter, for a team with this much urgency, something is going to happen. Trade for Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera the same day they finalize the Rich Hill and Aroldis Chapman deals? Sure, why not?
Checklist of obvious moves
This is the most important step. Mark down all of the gimmes, and turn your attention toward something more fulfilling, like the steady stream of dumb Twitter rumors.
The Giants will sign a closer. There are three premium closers (and Brad Ziegler), and the Giants will sign one of the three (or Brad Ziegler). Mark Melancon is the likeliest acquisition because he’s the right mix of super expensive but not too expensive. His contract would prove a point, but it wouldn’t salt the earth. (Unless they sign Brad Ziegler.)
The Dodgers will sign Rich Hill. This is apparently something of an open secret, with the master tweeting that rival teams are expecting Hill to agree to terms on a three-year deal.That would make just a ton of sense, which is why the Marlins will crawl out from under the floorboards and offer him $90 million. Except it makes far, far, far too much sense for the Dodgers to bring back the Kershaw complement they got used to.
The Blue Jays will do something unpopular, but note: This isn’t synonymous with dumb or unfortunate. That remains to be seen. But they’ll probably lose Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista in the same week, ending the Great Era of Inexplicable Found Money. In their place, the Blue Jays will make … other moves.
