While there is no excitement of actual baseball being played, there’s a different kind of excitement that keeps fans engaged during the dead of winter: the Hot Stove.

Every team is on the verge of getting a clean slate upon reporting to Spring Training, and who knows, maybe the moves made in the offseason is all that’s needed to turn a pretender into a legitimate playoff contender. It doesn’t matter what we think about those trades and free-agent signings when they happen, though. The true judgment and evaluation comes once games start counting again in April.

The following seven free agents from last winter were viewed as important pieces toward contending for the teams who acquired them. There’s still time to turn things around before their contracts expire, but 2016 has unfortunately been nothing but forgettable for them thus far. 

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