MLB Winter Meetings Explained

If you're a baseball fan and you're bored by the inactivity of the MLB offseason thus far, fear not; Winter Meetings are less than a month away.

Still, there is a bit of mystery surrounding this yearly occurrence, especially compared to the beginning of free agency in other leagues.

MLB Winter Meetings Explained

Every offseason, in the first or second week of December, representatives from every MLB team congregate together at a pre-discussed location to determine baseball business, including trades and free agency.

This year, the meetings will take place in San Diego, from Dec. 8-12. Expect a decent amount of activity to take place during that timeframe.

In 2014, the Los Angeles Dodgers certainly took advantage of Winter Meetings, conducting six different transactions involving 19 different players, all within a 14-hour span. If that's not the definition of efficiency within the context of baseball, nothing is.

In recent years, however, Winter Meetings haven't really jumpstarted free agency at all; rather, there has been an increasingly concerning trend of free agents being forced to wait longer until they get a deal they deserve. It's caused the market to become stagnant, and frustrates both players and organizations.

Regardless, Winter Meetings are when the Hot Stove truly starts to heat up, and every baseball fan should be excited for that period of time, especially in an offseason where we'll see where players such as Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon will be landing.