Opinion

One of the things that makes baseball's offseason the most exciting of all the major professional sports leagues is that you never know what's going to happen.

The opportunities for players and teams alike to surprise—and disappoint—with their decision-making are more plentiful than at any other point during the year. As history has shown us, everyone involved is always up for the challenge.

The American League East is forcing the New York Yankees’ hand. 

The San Francisco Giants just lost Pablo Sandoval, their third baseman and cleanup hitter. So, naturally, they should set their sights on...Jon Lester, starting pitcher.

Seems counterintuitive on its face. Sandoval's departure leaves a panda-sized hole in the San Francisco lineup; shouldn't filling it be priority No. 1?

Sometimes it's best not to spend all of your money in one place. For MLB clubs, sometimes it's best not to spend all of their money in one offseason. 

That's starting to look like the case this year. The winter meetings are still a week away, but already the free-agent market is getting light. 

The first month of the 2014-15 MLB offseason is nearly in the books, and it has been as busy a November as any in recent memory.

The position-player market in particular has exploded, as Russell Martin, Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval, Adam LaRoche, Billy Butler, Michael Cuddyer, Yasmany Tomas and Victor Martinez have all signed new deals in free agency.

Every team in baseball heads into the offseason with a strategy, a game plan of how it is going to attack the open market and look to improve its roster.

For some, it's dealing from a position of strength—say an abundance of young pitching—to secure the impact bat that a team's lineup desperately needs. For others, the strategy is simply to open the team's coffers, buying the best free-agent talent available to plug holes on the roster.

The Oakland Athletics have dealt Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for Brett Lawrie and three players you've never heard of, per the team's Twitter account.

While the rest of Major League Baseball was spending the evening of Black Friday recovering from all the hectic holiday shopping and Thanksgiving leftovers, the Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland Athletics were busy putting the finishing touches on a blockbuster trade.

Giancarlo Stanton and the Miami Marlins made sports history earlier this month when the two sides agreed to an unprecedented 13-year, $325 million contract extension through 2027.

The Detroit Tigers have all but relegated themselves to playing next season without last season’s ace, Max Scherzer.