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Every year we see teams gamble. Whether it's signing a big-name free agent for multiple years, exchanging prospects for elite players, or rolling the dice on someone who might have another good year or two left in the tank, every team takes risks. Let's look at some of the most successful risks (from a strictly 2010 standpoint) we've seen in the past year by seeing which freshly-signed or traded players will be headed to Los Angeles as members of the 2010 All-Star rosters.

American League:

Vladimir Guerrero — Signed a one-year, $6.5MM deal with a mutual option for 2011. Guerrero is hitting a ridiculous .331/.376/.570 with 18 HR and 70 RBI. Both of those numbers eclipse his totals from an injury-shortened 2009.

Adrian Beltre — Signed a one-year deal worth $9MM with a $5MM player option. Clearly hoping to build up his value, Beltre's followed through to the tune of a .341/.377/.545 line with 12 long balls and 53 driven in. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that player option's not getting exercised.

Victor Martinez — Acquired at last year's trading deadline, V-Mart has recovered from a slow start to produce a strong overall line of .289/.344/.480, though he's currently on the disabled list. He'll be one of the more sought-after free agents on this year's market.

Cliff Lee — Acquired by Seattle in a multi-team deal. Including today's start, Lee's compiled a 2.34 ERA through 103.2 innings. He's struck out 89 hitters and, remarkably, has the same number of complete games (five) as walks issued. He may not be long for the Emerald City, but he's been a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing season.

Jose Valverde — Signed a two-year, $14MM deal with Detroit. Arguably the American League's best closer so far, Papa Grande has just two earned runs through 35 innings while recording 33 K's. He's got 18 saves in 19 chances, and opponents are somehow hitting just .099 against him.

John Buck — Signed with Toronto after being non-tendered by Kansas City. Doubtful that many pegged Buck as an All-Star, but he's got a line of .271/.306/.509 and his 13 HRs are second among Major League catchers.

National League:

Scott Rolen — Acquired at last year's deadline, Rolen signed a two-year extension worth $13MM. Rolen's reminded us that his bat was once as highly regarded as his glove with a .302/.368/.577 line to go along with 17 HR. His .577 slugging percentage leads the NL.

Matt Holliday — Signed a seven-year, $120MM deal with the Cardinals. He may not be decimating the National League like he did in his return in 2009, but Holliday's got a solid line of .301/.375/.498 and went on a tear in the month of June (.971 OPS) 

Marlon Byrd — Signed a three-year, $15MM deal with the Cubs. Byrd's impressed in his first year in the Windy City. His .310/.357/.485 line makes for an .842 OPS, fifth-best among Major League center fielders. His 26 doubles lead the National League.

Matt Capps — Signed with Washington after being non-tendered by Pittsburgh. Capps has a breath of fresh air for Jim Riggleman's bullpen, registering 22 saves and 32 K's in 36.2 innings. He's struggled a bit following a dominant start to the season, but his ERA remains at 3.19.

The MLBTR Forums are hopping, with over 7,000 members and almost 3,000 discussion threads.  It's the place to be if you'd like to expand the discussion beyond our comments section and dive into more topics or create your own.  We've got sections for trade rumors, free agents, the draft, prospects, general baseball, fantasy baseball, and each of the 30 teams.  Sign up for the MLBTR Forums today!

As any MLBTR reader knows, there are many different types of trades. It takes a certain kind of player to be traded in numerous different kinds of trades, but one such player is Bobby Bonilla. He was part of nearly every type of trade there is: as a prospect, for prospects, in a megadeal, even in an exchange of bad contracts. This doesn't even include the times he switched teams via the Rule 5 Draft, or when he became the highest-paid free agent in baseball history.

Let's review the transaction madness, shall we?

Bonilla was originally signed as an amateur free agent by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1981. However, after just three home runs in 39 games for the Single-A Prince William Pirates of the Carolina League, Pittsburgh left him unprotected and the Chicago White Sox picked him up in the Rule 5 Draft. Bonilla handled the jump pretty well, hitting .269/.361/.355 with the 1986 White Sox. The Pirates managed to re-acquire him in July 1986, dealing established starter Jose DeLeon, who had been struggling terribly with Pittsburgh.

DeLeon went on to pitch reasonably well for Chicago in 1986-87, but Bonilla quickly established himself as a star for the Pirates. In his five full seasons with Pittsburgh, Bonilla posted OPS+ marks of 118, 143, 145, 132 and 149. He went to four All-Star games and helped the Pirates to two division titles. Clearly, Pittsburgh got the better end of that deal.

After Bonilla signed with the Mets, he performed reasonably well, but many of the other Mets didn't. As a result, smack in the middle of his best major league season, Bonilla was traded in July 1995, this time as the star player, for prospects Damon Buford and Alex Ochoa. While Buford and Ochoa never established themselves as starters, Bonilla picked up right where he left off in New York. After posting a 160 OPS+ with the Mets, he had a 139 OPS+ over the remainder of 1995 and helped Baltimore to the postseason in 1996 with an OPS+ of 114.

Bonilla then signed with the 1997 Marlins as a free agent, and helped them to a World Series title with his 125 OPS+. But by 1998, Florida was in firesale mode, and so Bonilla was one of the firesold, traded along with Gary Sheffield, Jim Eisenreich, Charles Johnson and Manuel Barrios for Mike Piazza and Todd Zeile. (Piazza and Zeile, in turn were dealt for prospects.)

But Bonilla was finished as a useful major league hitter, posting just an OPS+ of 81 after heading to Los Angeles. The Dodgers had him under contract in 1999 for $5.9MM. The Mets, meanwhile, had a relief pitcher named Mel Rojas under contract for approximately $4.6MM in 1999, and Rojas had posted a 6.05 ERA in 1998. Therefore, an auspicious marriage of convenience occurred, with the two players getting exchanged for one another.

The deal helped neither team, with Rojas pitching to a 18.00 ERA for three teams in 1999. Bonilla, now 36 and largely unable to run, became New York's Opening Day right fielder and number five hitter, two roles he quickly lost in a season with an OPS+ of 48. In the spring of 2000, the Mets agreed to an annual payment of approximately $1.2MM a year from 2011 to 2035 to buy out Bonilla's 2000 contract worth $5.9MM.

So as Bonilla sits back and cashes Met checks well into his 70s, he can reflect on a truly fantastic legacy of trades.

An explanation of the many ways to enjoy MLB Trade Rumors:

• If the main site doesn't load perfectly on your cell phone, try the more mobile-friendly mlbtraderumors.mobi.  It's a simple page that shows you just the headlines and lets you click through to what you want to read.
• If you want only the hard news in the form of transactions, our transactions page is the ticket.  You can also get only the transactions via Twitter or RSS. 
• To return to the main page at any time, just click on the title or the Home button on the navigation bar below the title. 
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• Feeds By Team is a very useful dropdown.  Hover over it to see all 30 teams.  Click on the team name to bring up a page of every post containing information about that team, with the latest on top.  These are the same pages you'll find if you go to the Rumors By Team section on the sidebar and select A's Rumors, Angels Rumors, etc.  Also under the Feeds By Team dropdown, you'll find RSS and Twitter buttons.  Those links allow you to follow a single team's rumors via RSS or Twitter.  Did you know we have a separate Twitter account for each of the 30 teams?  For example you can follow @mlbtrtigers, where you would get the latest Tigers updates.
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• MLBTR Features has all kinds of goodies, including our free agent lists, list of Scott Boras clients, latest Elias Rankings, GM-related stuff, and list of first-round draft picks to sign.  Many of the MLBTR Features are constantly updated by our writers, so be assured that our free agent lists are always fresh.  The Elias Rankings have been reverse-engineered for MLBTR by Eddie Bajek, and you won't find that info anywhere else. 
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• Next we have Featured Posts, where you'll find original work from MLBTR writers we consider noteworthy.  For example, Howard Megdal recently looked back at a 12-player trade.

The executive director for the Major League Baseball Players Association says he can imagine an improved version of the MLB draft. Michael Weiner says players have accepted the draft and it works – to an extent.

“Everything is relative,” Weiner told MLBTR from Manhattan. “Does it work for the players as opposed to a system where players could be free agents and could freely negotiate with any club as they enter major league baseball? No.”

That’s because players have little leverage once they’re drafted by an MLB team. They can choose not to sign for a year, but that has limited appeal to most ballplayers. The draft isn’t perfect and Weiner, who maintains regular contact with players through e-mail, text messaging and face-to-face contact, notes that the MLBPA was in favor of trading draft picks in 2002 and again in 2006. Weiner says the MLBPA would consider trading picks to further competitive balance when the current collective bargaining agreement between players and owners expires after 2011.

“I’m not sure it gives the player more leverage,” Weiner said, noting that players would only be able to negotiate directly with one club. “But it clearly gives the club that selected the player more leverage.” 

Others, including Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, have suggested that trading picks would allow players to refuse to sign unless the team that drafted them dealt them to specific clubs. That could give players more say in their future, though not necessarily more money.

Now, teams can’t trade draft picks and can’t trade the players they sign for a year after their first pro contracts. Weiner points out that clubs would have more options if they could trade draft picks like NBA, NFL and NHL teams. 

December 11th, 2011 probably seems like a long way away. Thousands more games will have been played by then and two more World Series champions will have been crowned. But as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, Michael Weiner sees that date a little more clearly than the rest of us. That’s because the collective bargaining agreement between the MLBPA and baseball’s owners expires next December 11th.

Weiner, who took over as MLBPA leader last year after two-plus decades of work with the association, is constantly in touch with players and staff to anticipate the changes that players and owners will discuss in a year and a half. And players have already identified salary arbitration as one of the issues they want to bring up in collective bargaining. That means super twos (players who go to salary arbitration four times instead of three) may no longer exist as we know them. But the MLBPA recognizes that the super two is better than nothing.

“Do we think super two is a good thing? Yes,” Weiner told MLBTR from his Manhattan office, overlooking Rockefeller Center. “Do we think that clubs now manipulating the super two cutoff is a good thing? No.”

Weiner says the super two works, compared to what preceded it. From 1985-90, no players with less than three years’ service time were eligible for arbitration. The players, who qualified for arbitration after two years before 1985, bargained for the super two in 1990 and as a result, one-sixth of players with more than two and less than three years of service now qualify. In other words, about ten or 20 more players go to arbitration each year.

Weiner keeps in touch with players through e-mail and text messaging during the season, though much of his networking happens in spring training. And he keeps tabs on the owners, too. He’s in touch with the people running baseball clubs and suggests the MLBPA isn’t the only side that would re-consider super twos.

“I think there’s some dis-satisfaction on the management side as well,” Weiner said. “What’s happened with some of these very prominent young players and the concern [exists] that arbitration eligibility has affected their path to the major leagues.”

Twenty years into the super two era, the cutoff date has become predictable. Yes, it varies every year, but teams know they can’t call prospects up much before the beginning of June if they want to be sure that the players only go to arbitration three times. 

Whether you consider those call ups strategic or manipulative, they affect the number of times a player goes to arbitration. From a player’s perspective, years of arbitration (and multi-million dollar salaries) trump the pre-arbitration years of unilateral control, when players sometimes receive raises, but are essentially at the mercy of their teams.

The players have already told the MLBPA to address arbitration in the next round of collective bargaining. Ideally, top young stars would be called to the majors the moment they’re deemed ready to contribute, but with millions of dollars at stake, teams have shown a willingness to wait. Coincidence or not, Stephen Strasburg (2010), Pedro Alvarez (2010), Mike Stanton (2010), Matt Wieters (2009), Jay Bruce (2008), Ryan Braun (2007) and others have been called up around June 1st in recent years.

It’s not contentious to suggest that it’s in the game's best interest to have the best players at baseball’s highest level. But Weiner points out that teams can call players up strategically whether the cutoff for arbitration eligibility is two years, three years or somewhere in between.

“Unless you come up with a system that makes it very difficult to know where that line is going to fall,” Weiner cautioned, “There’s always that possibility for manipulation.”

If you'd like to filter MLBTR's information by team or limit it to transactions only, we've got you covered.

In the navigation bar, check out the Feeds By Team dropdown.  Clicking on the name of a team returns all the posts that reference that club.  For example, this page displays only posts with Braves-related rumors.  The newest will always be on top. 

Next to the word "Braves" you'll see an RSS button and a Twitter button.  The RSS button leads here, to the URL you'd put into your RSS reader to receive only our Braves rumors.  The Twitter button takes you to @mlbtrbraves, which shows all posts involving the team.  The MLBTR team Twitter pages are also a place to quickly receive info from team press releases, even if that info is not used on the main site.

If you'd prefer to monitor only actual transactions, we've got several options.  Our Transactions page shows only posts marked as transactions, such as signings, trades, DFAs, and releases.  You can also get this same info on Twitter and RSS.

If you're a regular MLBTR reader, you'll be familiar with our chats, our Week In Review posts and Mike Axisa's Baseball Blogs Weigh In feature. Here's some more detail on when you'll see our weekly features and exactly what to expect from them:

• Radio Appearances – Tim appears on 590 KFNS in St. Louis every Tuesday at 1:25pm CST. You can always listen live here.
• MLBTR Chats – Come by every Wednesday at 2pm CST to chat with Tim Dierkes or me about the latest trades, signings and rumblings around the major leagues.
• Baseball Blogs Weigh In – Every Friday morning, Mike Axisa directs you to some of the best writing on baseball blogs around the web. Whether it's opinion, stats or something else entirely, you can connect to the best of the blogosphere once a week on MLBTR. If you want to send Mike a post of yours,  reach him at: mike@riveraveblues.com.
• Week In Review – It's amazing how much happens in seven days. Every Sunday night, we summarize the week's biggest stories and link to some of our original content in our Week In Review posts.

Several contenders could use a boost in the slugging department, especially the Padres and A's.  Let's take a look at potentially available power bats for the trade deadline.

• Prince Fielder, Brewers.  Fielder has shown less power than the others on this list, with a slugging percentage of just .437.  Still, he gets on base and has slugged over .600 in multiple seasons.  He has $6.7MM left on this year's contract and will get a raise in arbitration after the season.  Fielder obviously won't come cheap, if he's even made available.
• Lance Berkman, Astros.  He's not showing power yet this year and has $11.2MM left on his contract.  And that's if he backs down from the idea of demanding his option be exercised upon a trade.
• Paul Konerko, White Sox.  Konerko's .610 SLG ranks fourth in the American League, so in that regard he's the best available power bat.  Obstacles: he's owed $7.6MM and has a full no-trade clause.  With a surprising .583 SLG, Konerko's teammate Alex Rios is another consideration.  Rios is having a fine year, even if U.S. Cellular is giving his bat a boost.  His contract still has over $56MM through 2014, and he can block trades to six teams.  Andruw Jones should be widely available, though he's fared poorly since May 1st.
• Corey Hart, Brewers.  Hart somehow leads the NL with 15 home runs.  Like Fielder, the Brewers might prefer to keep the arbitration-eligible outfielder around for 2011 if they want to contend.
• Kelly Johnson, Diamondbacks.  Arizona's second baseman is also arbitration-eligible after the season.  He's plenty valuable, but keep in mind he's hitting a more reasonable .254/.361/.429 since May 1st.  Johnson's teammate Adam LaRoche should be attainable, though he's down to .250/.344/.443.
• Luke Scott and Ty Wigginton, Orioles.  Both players are slugging over .500 and should be available.  Scott is under team control through 2012, but he's already earning $4.05MM.  Wiggy is owed $2.2MM through the rest of this season.
• Jose Guillen, Royals.  He's hitting just .213/.322/.394 since May 1st.  Guillen is owed the same amount as Konerko, but could probably be had for just a slight amount of salary relief.  More interesting is Guillen's teammate David DeJesus, who's hitting .306/.378/.461 on the season.  He can be controlled through next year, so the Royals should get something useful in return.
• Austin Kearns, Indians.  Kearns is a cheap rental with less than $500K remaining, and he's hitting .306/.380/.482.  Kearns' teammate Russell Branyan has a .463 SLG, if you prefer 1B/DH power.
• Ryan Doumit, Pirates.  The Bucs' backstop is at .281/.366/.461 on the season.  He's got about $7.8MM left through 2011.
• Others with pop: Jim Edmonds, Hunter Pence, Rickie Weeks, Garrett Jones, Ryan Raburn, Carlos Lee, Mike Lowell, Travis Hafner, Lyle Overbay, Jose Lopez, and Miguel Tejada.  For now we've left the Blue Jays, Nationals, and Cubs off the list, but that could change.

An explanation of the many ways to enjoy MLB Trade Rumors:

• If the main site doesn't load perfectly on your cell phone, try the more mobile-friendly mlbtraderumors.mobi.  It's a simple page that shows you just the headlines and lets you click through to what you want to read.
• If you want only the hard news in the form of transactions, our transactions page is the ticket.  You can also get only the transactions via Twitter or RSS. 
• To return to the main page at any time, just click on the title or the Home button on the navigation bar below the title. 
• The navigation bar will cover many of your needs.  Use the About dropdown to learn about this site or any of its writers. 
• The Contact button takes you to a page where you can write an email message to the MLBTR writers.  If you have a link to a rumor we've missed, please send it in through the Contact page!  Also use the Contact page to inquire about advertising on MLBTR.
• The Archives dropdown shows you 15 months worth.  If you need to go back further, click on Site Map at the very bottom of the page.  Site Map also lists out every MLBTR post category, including players, teams, and features.
• The Widget button takes you here, where website owners can easily add a constantly-updated box to their site with all of MLBTR's headlines.
• The Forums button takes you here, to a message board community of MLBTR readers with over 5,500 members.  You can discuss any baseball-related topic on the Forums, and start your own thread too.
• Feeds By Team is a very useful dropdown.  Hover over it to see all 30 teams.  Click on the team name to bring up a page of every post containing information about that team, with the latest on top.  These are the same pages you'll find if you go to the Rumors By Team section on the sidebar and select A's Rumors, Angels Rumors, etc.  Also under the Feeds By Team dropdown, you'll find RSS and Twitter buttons.  Those links allow you to follow a single team's rumors via RSS or Twitter.  Did you know we have a separate Twitter account for each of the 30 teams?  For example you can follow @mlbtrtigers, where you would've been the first to know about the team's director of player development stepping down yesterday.
• On the far right of the Navigation bar, you'll see buttons for Twitter, Facebook, and RSS.  MLBTR has almost 30,000 Twitter followers, over 18,000 Facebook fans, and over 26,000 RSS subscribers.  Sign up for these and you'll be the first to receive all of our posts.
• On to the sidebar.  It begins with a list of our Top Stories, which our writers update any time major hard news occurs.  Go here for a quick update on the most important stories.  Below that is the site's Search Box, where you can type in any player's name and get the latest on him. 
• MLBTR Features has all kinds of goodies, including our free agent lists, list of Scott Boras clients, latest Elias Rankings, GM-related stuff, and list of first-round draft picks to sign.  Many of the MLBTR Features are constantly updated by our writers, so be assured that our free agent lists are always fresh.  The Elias Rankings have been reverse-engineered for MLBTR by Eddie Bajek, and you won't find that info anywhere else. 
• Below Features you've got headlines for all the Recent Posts, in case you'd rather not scroll to see all the headlines.  Then there's a box for our Mailing List, where you can sign up to receive a daily email containing MLBTR's posts.  Use this option if you don't need the news as soon as possible.
• Next we have Featured Posts, where you'll find original work from MLBTR writers we consider noteworthy.  For example, Ben Nicholson-Smith spoke to multiple scouting directors for his post, The Growing Role Of Video For MLB Scouts.