Winners And Losers Of The MLB Offseason

Its Time! We've gone through some of the biggest events of the winter already. Super Bowl? Check. All Star Weekends? Check. Winter Classic? Check. Grammy's? Check. Oscars? Check too (almost) So now what do we do? That's where baseball comes back in! Training camps are now starting to get rocking and rolling. We are just a little over a month away from the start of a new baseball season. We're going to have some new faces in new places in Major League Baseball this year. So with that being said, lets take a look back at some of the biggest winners and losers from the offseason in the big leagues.

Lets start with the teams:

Winners:
Arizona Diamondbacks
Biggest signing they had over the winter was bringing Zach Grenkie into the mix to be the ace of that starting rotation. In fact, raise your hand if you predicted in October that the D-backs would be the club throwing $206.5 million at Zack Greinke. Raise your hand if you saw them dropping the No. 1 pick in the country in June, shortstop Dansby Swanson, into a package that brought Shelby Miller. Hmmm. We're not seeing a lot of hands out there. Throw in Tyler Clippard coming out of the Pen as well and you have something to work with in the Desert. Don't get me wrong I think the Dodgers and Giants are still going to be the class of the National League West again, but I think with this new pitching staff that the Diamondbacks have may make them a threat out West to those top powers!

Boston Red Sox
Zach Grenkie and Aroldis Chapman were the two biggest pitching names that were moved over the winter, to the Diamondbacks and Yankees respectively. Next up on the list were David Price and Craig Kimbrel. Funny thing is, both of those guys landed in the exact same place. Do you know what city that happens to be? Yeah, it was those Boston Red Sox. Boston managed to pull off the trick and bring both those guys on board. You bolster that pitching staff a bit more by adding those two guys into the mix, espically when you look at the rotation that now has Price, Clay Buchholz, Rick Porcello, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Joe Kelly, that's a pretty good rotation. And toss Kimbrel into the mix at the back end of the pen with Koji Uehara, its something to watch. There's still some issues that need to get worked out in Bostonm like being able to turn Hanley Ramirez into a real, live major league first baseman. Also, trying to get Pablo Sandoval to hit the gym instead of the dessert buffet is something that needs to be delt with. Getting those two pitchers is a big improvement but there still a little work to be done in Boston. They may still be a contender but aren't quite there yet.

Chicago Cubs
Here's a team who won 97 games a season ago and made it all the way to the National League Championship Series. Now they got better. Chicago has gone out and brought in right fielder Jason Heyward, second baseman/do-everything infielder Ben Zobrist and right-hander John Lackey. In right-handers Trevor Cahill and Adam Warren, who they also brought on board, they've also secured some solid depth for their pitching staff. Now you add some depth into that outfield with Heyward. Zobrist, you can put pretty much anywhere, so that makes him a dual threat. Add Warren into the mix out of the Pen, I'd make the Cubs a strong favorite coming out of the Central

Losers:
St Louis Cardinals
Last year the Cards won the Central for the 3rd year in a row. This year I feel that run is going to stop. They actually may have taken a step backwards during the offseason. Think about it. They lost Jason Heyward and John Lackey to free agency, making matters worse is the fact that they went to the Cubs. Then they got a scary health bulletin on Yadier Molina and Lance Lynn. Lynn has been lost for all of 2016 due to Tommy John surgery, and Yadier had to have a second surgery on his left thumb after the first didn't take. St. Louis' rotation will miss Lynn, and the entire team will suffer if Molina's thumb hinders his catching or hitting. Finally, they ]got outbid for their top free-agent targets, which was the biggest shock. Normally, when the Cards want somebody in free agency they get him. Didn't exactly happen this winter.

Los Angeles Dodgers
I'll give the Dodgers a little credit, they did try. Just didn't try hard enough. They lost out on both David Price (Boston) and Zach Greinke (Arizona)and have had deals for Hisashi Iwakuma and Aroldis Chapman fall apart. Along the way, the best they've been able to do is retain Brett Anderson and Chase Utley and settle for Scott Kazmir in lieu of their top pitching targets. Now lets not fully hit the panic button on the Dodgers, they still have a talent laiden team that has Yasiel Puig, Carl Crawford, Joc Pederson, Andre Ethier, Adrian Gonzalez and Clayton Kershaw. But the reason I consider this a failure is because the Giants and Diamondbacks got a lot better and the Dodgers didn't.

Cincinnati Reds
Cincy was thinking the same thing that the Braves were. By selling bigtime in the offseason, they would be able to rebuild with what they had and the cap space. Atlanta has the talent to possibly do that, but the Reds don't. The first big trade the Reds tried to make would have sent flame-throwing closer Aroldis Chapman to the Dodgers. But that fell apart and as a result, the Reds were forced to trade Chapman to the New York Yankees in a deal that looks like an absolute steal for the Bronx Bombers. The other big trade the Reds have been involved in this winter was the three-team deal that sent third baseman Todd Frazier to the Chicago White Sox and brought back three prospects from the Dodgers. The thinking here and everywhere else is that the Reds got an underwhelming return in that deal too. This team gave away some key pieces and depleted their depth. To make matters worse, they just so happen to play in one of the most talent laiden divisions in all of baseball.