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The baseball season ends, and the news conference season begins.Over the next two months, teams will sign players, fit caps on players, invite you to clap for players, raise expectations around players and then, as often as not, come to be better off without the players. Last year was a bit extreme -- in almost every way -- but consider the 10 best free agents from the winter of 2015-2016. Where are they now?Jason Heyward: Coming off a career-worst season; benched during the postseasonZack Greinke: Coming off his worst ERA since he was 21; made his fewest starts since he was 23David Price: Coming off his worst ERA since he was 23; chased in the fourth inning of his only postseason startJustin Upton: Coming off his worst OPS since he was 20Yoenis Cespedes: Coming off a repeat of his excellent 2015 performance, though in his fewest games since his rookie yearAlex Gordon: Coming off his worst season as a regularChris Davis: Coming off a pretty good season but with big drop-off from his 2015 walk-year performanceDexter Fowler: A studJohnny Cueto: A studScott Kazmir: Coming off his worst season since he was an AngelThe Hot Stove is a game of failure. Succeed three out of 10 times, and youre a Hall of Famer.For the most part, its also necessary for building a good team. Keep that in mind if you find yourself in auto-backlash mode, leading every take with bullet points such as the ones I just laid out. The offseason promises a lot and delivers less. It is your least reliable friend. But like your very least reliable friend, it is still a better last-minute babysitting option than a cat.Every year, at least one team asks much more of it than that, and this is where the offseason can become toxic. From a teams perspective, accurately assessing where it stands going into the winter is arguably as important as accurately assessing the merits of the players available. In recent history, weve seen:1. The Diamondbacks, a third-place team in 2015, outspend the Dodgers for Greinke and trade their most valuable prospect, first overall pick Dansby Swanson, for Shelby Miller. This promised to give the Diamondbacks a nice start to a playoff rotation, but the Diamondbacks werent very good going into the offseason and didnt get good enough by the end. They projected to be around a .500 team going into the 2016 season, things got worse, and they finished fourth.2. The Padres, a third-place team in 2014, traded for five new starting position players, a new Opening Day starter, a new closer and a new setup man before the 2015 season. But the Padres werent very good going into the offseason and didnt get good enough by the end. They projected to be around a .500 team, things got worse, and they finished fourth.3. The White Sox, a fourth-place team in 2014, traded for Jeff Samardzija and signed Melky Cabrera and Adam LaRoche, all two- to four-win players in 2014. The Sox also signed David Robertson and Zach Duke, both coming off outstanding seasons as high-leverage relievers. But the White Sox werent very good going into the offseason and didnt get good enough by the end. They projected to be around a .500 team, things got worse, and they finished fourth.Itd be easy to overstate some of these examples -- heck, if all you knew about baseball was these three teams, youd conclude that the only constants in the game are that things get worse and teams finish fourth. There were other factors in these teams struggles, from injuries to unforeseeable collapses to the whims of random fluctuation. But pair them with the list at the top, from Heyward to Kazmir, and theres a pretty obvious warning here: Dont let the Hot Stove do all the lifting. If you need five costly players to get where youre trying to go, you probably arent getting there. You probably just arent that good.These are extremely, gratuitously early projections for the 2017 season, published at FanGraphs:These projections are based on the rosters teams have today, with free agents removed. These are less precise than normal projections, which are already fully outgunned by the unpredictability of actual baseball. But they give us a sense of where teams stand right now. The Brewers are, according to this, ready to field a 69-win team. If they add five good players and give up nothing to do so, they still probably arent good enough to compete for a title with any reliability.The Brewers arent going to try. They arent even in danger of trying. They know where they are, and they know that the path to where they want to go is the long way: through the regular season, through the draft, through thousands of hours of player development and patiently waiting for the right move to open up. Other teams, though, are in more dangerous positions: close enough to convince themselves. Which teams are in the most danger of being this years Diamondbacks, this years Padres and this years White Sox?American League entrant: The Angels. This is not intended to be a referendum on each teams GM. There probably isnt a GM employed today whom I wouldnt trust with a team, and Im comfortable assuming they all have good perspective and a rational set of interests. But traditionally, it has been hard to know where the Angels GM stops and the ownership begins, and the owner -- Arte Moreno -- has a long history of overseeing (even ordering) big splashes for deeply flawed teams. The Angels havent won a postseason game in seven years, but in that time, they have remained stubbornly oriented toward win-now moves, sacrificing draft picks, prospects, long-term financial flexibility and perhaps even a GM along the way. The Angels are finally free of Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilsons contracts, and itll be tempting to spend that money on, well, the next Jered Weaver or C.J. Wilson contract, especially because the Angels have no prospects on the brink of contributing and no minor league talent to fund trades.But wait! That projection chart up there has the Angels winning 84 or 85 games, which would make them strong contenders and the perfect customers for one or two final pieces this winter, right? Maybe. That projection assumed nearly 700 good innings from Tyler Skaggs, Garrett Richards, Matt Shoemaker and Alex Meyer, who will be coming back from (respectively) Tommy John surgery, a UCL rehab, a fractured skull and shoulder issues. Theres a scenario in which those four are healthy and good and the Angels are healthy and good, in which case a couple of offseason moves to fill in a couple of the dead spots in the lineup would make sense. Trading for Cameron Maybin, for instance? Makes sense. However, any rosy projection for the Angels depends on all four of those pitchers. Add that no team is more at the mercy of a single hamstring tug than the Angels, who would lose two wins of projection simply by Mike Trout slipping on a wet patch of grass and missing six weeks. It arguably makes much more sense for the Angels to use the first half of the season to evaluate where these unknowns take them and load up at the trade deadline if things go right. That they dont have the prospects to actually load up at the trade deadline makes it all the more likely Moreno will want to see it done now.National League entrant: The Rockies. Last winter, the Rockies traded for a costly veteran closer, Jake McGee, who was two years from free agency. Nobody wants to see their team -- even their bad team -- give wins away in the ninth, so one can appreciate the effort, but it was a particularly win-now sort of trade for a team that was otherwise staying patient. Colorado had an unexpectedly strong first half and went into the trade deadline at around the .500 mark, which had them looking at buying. They didnt buy, but neither did they sell, which suggests a franchise that sees itself on the cusp of contention.Whether the Rockies are depends on your definition of cusp. The Rockies look a bit like the Diamondbacks did coming out of 2015: A bona fide superstar had a massive season, a couple of late bloomers -- in the Rockies case, Charlie Blackmon and DJ LeMahieu -- had star-level career years, and some hints of young starting pitching developed at the major league level. The Rockies have three positions who project to be replacement level and regression most likely coming for those late bloomers. The Rockies are a better team this year than they were a year ago, but they probably were a worse team last year than they looked three months ago.After the deadline, they went 23-34. Not buying was the right move in July. The offseason is more open-ended, and any team with a chance -- and the Rockies have a chance -- should be open to buying. This just isnt the year to commit.Heres where the caveat goes: Either of these teams could do exactly what the Diamondbacks, Padres and White Sox tried -- and succeed. If we go back just one year further, we can find near-unanimous consent that the Royals took themselves too seriously too early and traded future star Wil Myers for a doomed bid. Then the Royals made the World Series and won it the year after that. If we go back one year beyond that, we get the Blue Jays, who won the offseason by volume yet finished in last the next year -- then won the division two years after that with some of the same core. The counterargument to that is that Noah Syndergaard is a Met, not a Blue Jay, because of it. Team-building is complicated; judging what constitutes success is complicated.But what makes the Diamondbacks, Padres and White Sox such lasting examples isnt that they failed to win the season after winning the offseason. Its that the cost was so great, as any offseason buyer can anticipate it will be. All three teams are in relatively dire situations today because of those moves, because of the prospects and financial flexibility given up. Thats the price of skipping three spaces ahead. Sometimes its worth it, but if a team is going to mortgage its future, itd better hope its right about what the present is worth. Tim Ream USA Jersey . Reassurance came from Paul Tesori, his caddie and close friend whose newborn son is in intensive care in a Florida hospital. "Paul sent me a text this morning, just told me he loved me and wanted to go out and fight as hard as I would any other day," Simpson said Sunday after doing just that. Chris Pontius Jersey . In the lead up - which seemed to begin the moment Mike Geiger blew the whistle in Houston last Thursday night - the Impact rumour mill went into overdrive. The speculation went into meltdown mode, of the golden nugget variety. http://www.usasoccerauthority.com/paul-arriola-usa-jersey/ . Defencemen Drew Doughty, Shea Weber and forward Ryan Getzlaf also scored for the Canadians, who started their gold-medal defence 2-0. Goalie Roberto Luongo, getting the call in place of Game 1 starter Carey Price, was solid when needed in making 23 saves for the shutout. Jordan Morris Jersey . Brazilian national coach Luiz Felipe Scolari has confirmed that the veteran goalkeeper is set to join Toronto on loan, saying it will help him be ready for the World Cup. DeAndre Yedlin USA Jersey . -- Its been a long road back for Sean Bergenheim. While these werent exactly the footsteps of Peyton Manning that Trevor Siemian wanted to follow, the Denver Broncos QB at least had a little fun over his sprained left foot that sidelined him last week.While rookie Paxton Lynch was running the offense at practice, Siemian recreated Mannings famous photo from a year ago of the injured QB sitting at a hot tub with iPad in hand, one foot soaking and his helmet on so he could listen to the plays being called.Siemian sent the side-by-side photos (https://twitter.com/TrevorSiemian/status/805055555161227264 ) to Manning, who he said got a big kick out of it, before posting them on Twitter with the caption, This seemed to work out well for the last guy.While Manning was no Adonis, several followers did note that the five-time MVP looked more chiseled than Siemian.Id like to go on record that Peyton was flexing in his picture, Siemian said. Im getting a lot of heat that he looks stronger than me. So, Ive got to clear that air.---SHOT BLOCKER: Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap wasnt much of a scorer on the basketball court. He was in the game for one reason: Make the other team miss.Dunlap was adept at blocking shots when he played basketball while growing up, a skill hes parlayed into the NFL. The 6-foot-6 lineman leads the team with 14 passes defensed, which is six more than any other NFL lineman. He had four of them during a 32-14 win over the Eagles last Sunday and caused a misdirected pass by Carson Wentz that was picked off.Its something youve kind of got to have a knack for, Dunlap said. Its a lot of timing.Dunlap learned the timing while playing defense around the rim.That was my specialty, Dunlap said. I didnt score a lot of points; I blocked a lot of points. I blocked shots and got rebounds.The NFL doesnt keep detailed statistics on passes defensed, so Dunlaps accomplishment cant be put into historical perspective.---TREADING WATER: Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Laquon Treadwell has been a nonfactor in his rookie season, with one reception for 15 yards. Only recently has he begun to see more significant action, playing 34 of 58 snaps at Detroit on Nov. 24, and 11 of 74 snaps against Dallas on Dec. 1. Though Treadwell wasnt targeted on any of Sam Bradfords 37 passes in that game against the Lions, he emerged with valuable experience.That game really helped me with my mental state, just feeling the game, going the actual speed of the game, said Treadwell, the 23rd overall pick in the draft out of Mississippi. I was competing every day in practice making plays, but once youre in the game its a whole new edge of intensity that you have to play with.With wide receivers Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen each having already established career highs in receptions and yards, and the re-emergence of Cordarrelle Patterson in the offense, the Vikings havent been counting on Treadwell. But the lack of prodduction has been startling for a first-rounder.ddddddddddddOnce the season gets here, theres not a lot of reps, especially for someone who might be behind a couple guys. The starters are usually the ones who take all of them. So, its just hard for him to get time, but I think in the past couple weeks, he has really shown some flashes, Bradford said. And hes a guy that we feel like if we can get him involved and get him some targets, I think it would be good. I think the biggest thing for him is just experience and just getting out there and playing.---CONCUSSION WATCH: One year after reaching the Super Bowl, the Carolina Panthers have been plagued by concussions. Ten players have been in the concussion protocol since the start of the preseason, including quarterback Cam Newton and linebacker Luke Kuechly, both All-Pros in 2015.Panthers coach Ron Rivera said he will spend more time this offseason analyzing head injuries and ways to prevent them -- and hopes other will, too.To be very frank about it, I think its very important that, not just me, but that other people in this industry try to get to understand it a little bit more, Rivera said. Because who knows? Maybe theres something that were missing in terms of preparation. ... I dont know if there is an answer to it, but I think that if we are better educated, maybe we can spot things before they happen. Maybe theres something else we can do as coaches and professionals in this business to see if we can make a difference.---AARON DONALD, CHAMPION: Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald is an Xbox champion.Donald, a 2015 All-Pro, beat Seahawks star receiver Doug Baldwin in the championship of Microsofts Xbox NFL Player Charity Challenge. They competed in Madden 17 on Xbox One for the chance to win $51,000 and Microsoft products for the charity of their choice.The game wasnt as close as all the pregame trash talk would have projected, with Donald winning 20-9.Helping Donald win were strong performances by rookie quarterback Jared Goff (passing for 245 yards and two touchdowns) and Tavon Austin, who had eight receptions for 124 yards. Donald also got a goal-line stand by the Rams defense in the first half.Doug was a fierce competitor tonight, but Im so thankful I was able to pull off a championship win and give back to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Donald said.I had my shots in the game, but Aaron played well and I tip my cap to him, Baldwin added. Definitely a little disappointing that I wasnt able to bring it home for the Southern Youth Sports Association.---------AP Pro Football Writers Barry Wilner, Dave Campbell and Arnie Stapleton, and Sports Writers Joe Kay and Steve Reed contributed.---For more NFL coverage: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP-NFL ' ' '