Baseball is back. Or, to put it another way, the players are back on the fields grouped by their respective teams, frolicking on green grass in temperate climates -- all the earmarks of the annual spring training rite. But in a sense, baseball never left.
The 2024-25 hot stove season -- now mostly, but not completely, over -- was a solid one, with few droughts between important moves and some big-ticket maneuvers along the way. It's not quite as engaging as watching actual games, but it's a pretty good substitute.
All winter, move by move, I've been updating team depth charts, making educated playing-time forecasts and watching it all roll up into a way-too-early projection of the 2025 season. I even maintain my magnetic standings board during the winter, shuffling teams around as the pecking order evolves.
The last time we checked in with a Stock Watch was on the eve of the winter meetings. At the time, there had been a few splashy moves, such as the Los Angeles Dodgers signing Blake Snell, but most of the offseason jockeying lay ahead.
Now that most of that is behind us, it's time to see how MLB's updated hierarchy shakes out, at least according to one obsessive analyst's tabulation. As we go through the rankings and updated probabilities -- and how they've changed since early December -- we'll note how each club's expectation has evolved. What have teams told us through their level of activity? What do the respective fan bases expect from the season to come?
