The two teams most often connected to free agent slugger Prince Fielder are the Washington Nationals and the Texas Rangers. The Nationals are largely considered the leader in the clubhouse for the Fielder sweepstakes, though the Rangers reportedly met with Fielder and Scott Boras over the weekend for preliminary talks.

Signing Fielder to a long-term deal puts any organization into a precarious financial position. He is a legitimate +5 or +6 win player at this moment, but his defensive liabilities and his physical build have caused organizations to question whether that level of production will last over a five-plus year contract. Those concerns remain the primary reasons as to why the 27-year-old first baseman is still available.

Pushing aside those financial worries, though, and simply viewing baseball as athletic entertainment, Texas would perhaps be the most enthralling landing spot for Fielder this winter. The addition of his bat to the Rangers’ lineup would transform the second-best offense from 2011 (ranked by team wOBA) into a bona fide juggernaut next season.

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Walt Jocketty and his Cincinnati Reds have signaled to the baseball community that they believe the NL Central to be ripe for the taking in 2012.

The organization has been extremely bold this offseason. They opted to leverage several of their young, valuable assets — namely Yonder Alonso, Travis Wood, and Yasmani Grandal — to acquire Mat Latos and Sean Marshall, in hopes of complementing a potent offense that posted the fourth-best team wOBA in the league last season and catapulting the team into the postseason.

Cincinnati ratcheted up that aggressiveness even further on Tuesday evening by inking closer Ryan Madson to a one-year, $8.5M contract.

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Barry Larkin is largely expected to answer a phone call Monday afternoon and hear from Jack O’Connell, Secretary of the Baseball Writers Association of America, that he has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The BBWAA has voted at least one player into Cooperstown in every season since 1996, and Larkin has the best chance of anyone on the ballot this year.

However, that congratulatory phone call is not guaranteed. The long-time Cincinnati Reds shortstop must accumulate another 12.9% of the votes to jump from the 62.1% he garnered last year to the necessary 75% for induction, and the average percentage gained by the last twelve players inducted into the Hall of Fame (not in their first year of eligibility) once reaching the 60% threshold was only 10.8 — which would leave Larkin on the outside looking in for yet another season.

Even if Larkin does follow that trend, though, and only receives 72.9 percent of the vote this year, it seems inevitable that we will eventually be talking about Barry Larkin the Hall of Fame shortstop. And we should be.

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When the Marlins signed Jose Reyes to a six-year, $106M contract, much of the attention shifted to the Marlins’ former shortstop, Hanley Ramirez. How would he respond to the free agent signing and the news that he would be shifting to third base?

Multiple reports began to surface:

• Ramirez voiced displeasure over potential move to third base and demanded a trade.

• Ramirez did not necessarily demand a trade, but was certainly not pleased with the proposed switch.

Most recently, Hanley Ramirez will reportedly accept his move to third base and is excited to be a part of the 2012 Miami Marlins. Whether that is simply public relations posturing or his true attitude toward the positional change, nobody knows, but the move will improve the Marlins big league squad as a whole next season.

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The end of each year inspires many “Best Of” articles. Sports blogs, in particular, latch on to these types of posts. Best Plays of the Year. Best Games of the Year. Best Players of the Year. Even niche articles, such as Best Mustaches of the Year. The list goes on and on.

This list does not list the “Best Of” anything. Instead, it lists the worst five defenders since 2002 (when UZR was developed to record defensive statistics on this site).

To determine the worst defenders of the past ten seasons, I sorted players by UZR/150. This was to prevent a player — like Adam Dunn — from dominating the list by simply playing horrendous defense for the better part of a decade. I also set the minimum number of innings at 3,000. This helped to avoid one season outliers, such as Ryan Braun and his escapades at third base in 2007.

Finally, I employed positional adjustments, so the UZR numbers could be presented as a position neutral rating. This allowed for a poor fielding left fielder to be rated worse than an equally poor fielding center fielder, as one would assume the poor fielding center fielder would post improved numbers if moved to left because it is an easier defensive position. For more information on the specific positional adjustments utilized, visit this article from two years ago.

Without further ado…

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According to Ken Rosenthal and Jon Morosi of FOX Sports, the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds are conferring about a possible deal that would send left-hander Sean Marshall to Cincy in return for fellow-southpaw Travis Wood. It is not immediately clear if other players are being discussed as a part of the deal.

Though no trade has been agreed upon as of yet, the move would significantly help both teams within the context of each organization’s blueprint for future success.

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After throwing 231 innings and compiling a 3.31 ERA in the independent league ranks between 1999 and 2003, the Seattle Mariners took a chance on left-hander George Sherrill and signed him to a minor-league deal. He promptly broke into the big leagues a year later and served as a core piece of the Mariners’ bullpen for four years before being shipped to Baltimore prior to the 2008 season in the blockbuster deal that brought Erik Bedard to the Pacific Northwest.

The career of George Sherrill now comes full circle, as he reportedly will return to Seattle on a one-year contract worth $1.1M plus incentives.

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When Alex Anthopoulos and the Toronto Blue Jays acquired center fielder Colby Rasmus for Edwin Jackson, Octavio Dotel, and Marc Rzepczynski just before the Trade Deadline last summer, the blogosphere and Twitterverse were exploding with praise for Toronto.

Anthopoulos parted with relatively little to acquire a young center fielder who was worth 4.3 WAR in the previous season at only 24 years old. His .366 wOBA was the third best in baseball by a center fielder, which was only bested by Josh Hamilton and Carlos Gonzalez. Rasmus also had three-and-a-half years remaining under team control, which only augmented his value as a baseball asset.

The trade was an unequivocal win for our amiable neighbors north of the border. Toronto’s stat-friendly, new-age general manager hoodwinked his backward counterpart in St. Louis, and frankly, it wasn’t even close.

At least, that was what was supposed to happen.

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The weekend produced one of the most surprising and most controversial stories of the past decade in baseball. Ryan Braun tested positive for increased testosterone levels in a random drug test during the 2011 Postseason, which violates the new steroid policy implemented by Major League Baseball.

Sources have suggested that Braun did not test positive for performance-enhancing drugs or steroids, but for a “prohibited substance” that caused his testosterone levels to jump significantly. Sources have also stated that the MLB has never seen results such as this and that there were “highly unusual circumstances” surrounding the test and the results — not limited to reported chain-of-custody issues within the testing and results that produced twice as much testosterone than has ever been seen in a previous test.

The saga began with the entire baseball world lamenting what can only be called a loss of innocence. One of the poster boys for the new, clean MLB tested positive for PEDs. This wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. Immediately, many folks even started to call for Braun’s MVP to be revoked.

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Doug Melvin and the Milwaukee Brewers took a calculated gamble by offering Francisco Rodriguez arbitration earlier this offseason. They expected the right-hander to decline arbitration in pursuit of a closer’s role and a multi-year deal elsewhere, and Milwaukee would garner two draft picks in the process.

Teams started snapping up available closers, however, and Rodriguez sat on the sidelines without many available options. The Padres were rumored to be interested at one point, but instead opted to trade for Huston Street. The Mets internally discussed a reunion with their former closer, but settled on Frank Francisco to likely handle the ninth inning.

In the end, too few viable landing spots were available to entice K-Rod to forgo arbitration and gamble on the open market. He accepted the Brewers’ offer of arbitration and will receive a salary somewhere just south of $13.5M — the amount he made in 2011 with the Mets and Brewers — and serve as the set-up man for John Axford.

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