MLB

The once-stocked Cardinals system isn’t as strong as previous years, though that was to be expected after the team graduated Kolten Wong and Carlos Martinez to the major leagues last season and tragically lost a future star in Oscar Taveras.

Major League Baseball may be in the midst of its offseason, but that hasn't stopped the rumor mill from churning out hot rumors about some of the biggest stars in the sport.

Let's pretend for a moment that each MLB team's offseason was evaluated in a way similar to that of a college football or basketball program. Free-agent signings and trade additions would be assigned a rating from 1-5 on the "star" scale, and the complete class of new additions would be graded from there.

1. January Will Bring the Max Scherzer Thaw

Spring training is little more than a month away, which means the biggest marquee free agent this side of Jon Lester is about to sign with…

"The two sleepers all along for me were St. Louis and Washington," one American League executive said of Max Scherzer's possible destinations. "They're just guesses. I can see him with the Yankees, too, or going back to Detroit."

As you'd expect from a Cy Young-caliber pitcher with baseball's most powerful agent, Max Scherzer has some rather large contract demands that he doesn't seem interested in backing down from.

The Cincinnati Reds' top prospects can be broken down into two groups: outfielders and pitchers.

As you might have guessed, the Reds don’t have a particularly balanced system due to a lack of infield prospects. However, that shouldn’t detract from the fact that they have several players with bright futures in the major leagues.

Sometimes, baseball's rumor mill spins furiously, spitting out juicy tidbits with the speed of an Aroldis Chapman fastball and leaving us with more potential trade scenarios to dissect and speculate about than we know what to do with.

Other times, the rumor mill resembles David Ortiz rounding the bases, taking a slower, plodding approach that forces us to dig deep in finding worthwhile trade scenarios to banter about. For a weekly series such as this, it's those other times that prove to be the most difficult.

The Boston Red Sox enter 2015 with a number of fresh faces and many returning veterans.  The end results of a variety of winter dealings so far are favorable to some Red Sox players and not so kind to others.  With spring training lurking around the corner, here are the biggest winners and losers of Boston's offseason so far, categorized by position players and pitchers.

Position Players

Winner: Hanley Ramirez

Andre Ethier was once a pillar of the storied Los Angeles Dodgers organization, so stable a contributor that the previous ownership/front-office regime gave him a heavy eight-figure contract.

Here's a thought: Let's step into the (imaginary) lab, dissect some of MLB's biggest stars (metaphorically) and build ourselves the ultimate hitter.

Hey, it's mid-January, otherwise known as not the best time to be a baseball fan. There's another long, cold, soggy month until pitchers and catchers report.

Other than obsessively warming our hands by the hot stove, what can we do?

Frivolous theoretical exercises, that's what. (You thought I was going to say be a productive member of society? Pssh.)