With the winter meetings just around the corner, I’m going to be releasing my top ten stories to follow throughout the best weekend of the entire winter for a baseball fan. This is obviously the place where the rumors fly, the GM’s get together to talk trade, and free agent talks pick up steam.

10- Where do the Cubs trade Milton Bradley? The soap opera that is Milton Bradley continues in Chicago as Jim Hendry is desperate to move this guy. According to multiple sources, the players absolutely can’t stand him, which is never a good thing. The fact this isn’t an MTV reality series really makes me scratch my head in wonder. Now, I’m all in favor of trading Bradley if you can make the team better, but I don’t know if it’s worth trading him to make the team worse. Players should be able to ignore the antics and go about their usual business. As a player, I never got along with every single one of my teammates and that’s sports. Saying that one player is breaking up the locker room is pretty childish and clearly the locker room isn’t as strong as it supposedly is.

9- Who overpays Chone Figgins? Chone Figgins is quite the interesting name out there, but after inconsistent seasons offensively, and a few injuries that have taken him off the field- who bites the bullet and gives the speedster 11-13 million per season? If I’m a GM, he’s a guy I absolutely 100% stay away from. He’s already in his 30’s and once his legs go, he could virtually be pretty worthless offensively. Sure he had a great year last year, but contract years do wonders for players. There’s to much of a risk to dish out that kind of money to a player that very well could be a Luis Castillo or worse in 4 years.

8- Where does Aroldis Chapmen land? The Cuban sensation recently hired the Hendricks brothers to represent him in negotiations that could land him an 8 figure a year salary. The wonder kid not only throws smoke, but is left handed and we all know that means his value goes up just due to that. With an offseason lacking big name pitchers, this makes the Chapmen chronicles much more interesting to follow.

Check back for Brett’s 7-5 top stories of the winter meetings.