Here is the free-agent class of 2012-13, ranked from Nos. 1 to 175. The rankings are based on a number of variables, including each player's history, age and potential, and are as much about predicted performance as market value, providing a general outline as free agency unfolds between now and spring training.

Bookmark this page and return frequently. As the offseason progresses, Yahoo! Sports will update it with news of signings and their impact on the other free agents, as well as a supplementary list of players who are non-tendered by their current teams.

1. Zack Greinke, SP: SIGNED  He is young (29) and throws five legitimate major league pitches (fastball and slider the two best, plus a curve, change and cutter). He didn't beat CC Sabathia's record payday, but he got $147 million over six years from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Story 

4. Anibal Sanchez, SP:

DETROIT – The 2012 World Series concluded with an 89-mph fastball over the middle of the plate, the sort of pitch that ends up over outfield fences as often as it does in catchers' mitts. Buster Posey squeezed it, still a little surprised it had arrived there, because that meant Miguel Cabrera, the game's best hitter, had watched it go by, knees buckling ever so slightly, as though he wanted to genuflect to Sergio Romo, who had the stones to feed him that pitch at that moment. It took Posey the slightest moment to compose himself. And then he ran like a madman to join in the fury that soon would engulf him.

Over the last month, as they first played can't-be-killed zombies and then ran roughshod over the American League's finest, the San Francisco Giants have forged any number of identities. They wore their intangibles of fighters and scrappers, gamers and grinders, like they meant more than just words. They embraced their ability to defy defeat and couldn't explain it but for the

DETROIT – The World Series ended Saturday night. They will play a Game 4 because they have to, and they may play a Game 5 if the Detroit Tigers find some semblance of competence. Anything beyond that is not happening if we're to believe history, and we're inclined to, even if the San Francisco Giants have reminded us all this postseason that history isn't always the sage it's cracked up to be.

History, for example, told us that the Giants weren't supposed to claw back and win three straight games on the road in the division series. No team ever had done that until San Francisco. And history, remember, gave the Giants a flyweight's chance against a heavyweight facing a 3-1 series deficit to St. Louis until they went jab-jab-uppercut.

Prince Fielder walks back to the dugout after striking out. (AP photo)So forgive the Giants if they're not yet ready to declare this 108th World Series the inevitability it surely is. The Giants are winning this thing, and they're winning it in grand style, a 2-0 victory over the Tigers in Game 3 staking them a

SAN FRANCISCO – Most afternoons, Eli Whiteside heads down the right-field line at AT&T Park and meets his student for the day. As the catcher for the San Francisco Giants pitchers between-start bullpen sessions, Whiteside plays a number of roles beyond target. For 30 or 40 pitches, he is a psychologist and a manipulator, a biomechanist and an umpire. Most of all, he is a scout, his perspective on the Giants pitchers keener than anyone's. And he knew exactly what was coming at the Detroit Tigers this week. San Francisco starter Madison Bumgarner used his slider to shut down Detroit's offense. (AP)

"These guys are really good," Whiteside said.

This is no boast. Whiteside was born and raised in Mississippi. He knows better than to do that. It's just true: He saw how Barry Zito was throwing before his start and watched him throw a wet blanket on the Tigers' offense in the first game of the World Series, and he helped Madison Bumgarner find himself after weeks of searching. Seven shutout innings, eight strikeouts and just two hits later from Bumgarner on Thursday night, the

Barry Zito held the Tigers to one run and six hits in 5 2/3 innings in Game 1. (Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO – Failure brought them here together, to this place of serendipitous success. Baseball offers few in-betweens. Win or lose. Hit or miss. Ball or strike. Failure and success are the sport's dichotomy, partners on a continuum of two, the yin and yang that Barry Zito and Tim Lincecum know as well as anybody.

They sat together Wednesday night and talked. Not about the failures, because those are implicit. More about this moment, this scene, this first game of the World Series that Zito started and Lincecum locked down Wednesday night, and the way this game takes convention and doses it with LSD. Baseball stole from Zito and Lincecum their professional dignity, their perception of success and, at times, their sanity. For to have a gift and then lose it plays nasty sorts of tricks on the mind.

Just as quickly, Game 1 reminded them, baseball can return each of those things, maybe in heavier doses than before. Because there was Zito, nine-figure bust, shutting down the

SAN FRANCISCO – Of all the teams to grow a conscience about performance-enhancing drugs, of course it had to be the San Francisco Giants. For years, Barry Bonds made Lance Armstrong look like a lightweight, and nobody here did anything. On the Giants' playoff roster today is Guillermo Mota, one of the only two-time offenders of baseball's drug policy, and they're happy to use him in relief. Melky Cabrera hit .346 for the Giants prior to his 50-game suspension. (Photo by Hunter Martin/Getty Images)

Then there is Melky Cabrera, banished, shunned but not forgotten. The Giants want nothing to do with him as they float into Game 1 of the World Series, in which they'll host the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday night at AT&T Park – a game they have the privilege of playing at home, by the way, because Cabrera won the National League home-field advantage by taking All-Star Game MVP honors.

He is eligible to play, having served his 50-game suspension, only the Giants have no desire to bring him back. Why? It's complicated, yes, more than most PED cases, because of Cabrera's high profile and his

Wanted: Baseball manager

Employer: Miami Marlins, the team that has been through six managers in the last 10 years and on Tuesday ran off Ozzie Guillen following one season – just like we had Joe Girardi. But we won't do that to you. Promise!

Why? Because you have the ability to get along with a megalomaniacal owner and his Napoleonic ex-stepson team president, who manage this franchise with the finesse of a chainsaw and the savvy of a slug. And by "the ability," we mean that maybe, just maybe, we won't find you loathsome by the end of your first season and fire you, too. Ozzie Guillen started this season with a four-year, $10 million deal. He was fired Tuesday. (AP)

Who will I work for? Glad you asked! Jeffrey Loria is the owner. He wants to be like George Steinbrenner, only people think he's a joke. David Samson is the president. He conned politicians into spending hundreds of millions of dollars for an opulent new stadium that nobody went to. The on-field brain trust of Larry Beinfest, Mike Hill and Dan Jennings, long respected, have had a few down years. They're

SAN FRANCISCO – The first deluge began at 6:09 p.m. local time. It lasted 26 minutes. In its wake, it left several things: five runs, four hits, two walks, an error, a broken bat, a never-before-seen swing and a baseball team undone by the detritus. There was more, of course, because Game 7 of the NLCS involved eight other innings, too. And yet nothing better encapsulated the series the St. Louis Cardinals blew than that slice of misery.

For the next two hours, the Cardinals stared at their own failure. It was there on the scoreboard, in bright lights, for the ravenous denizens of AT&T Park to see, for the San Francisco Giants to relish, for the world to know. And it was there on the replay that time will wear out when it tries to piece together how the Cardinals frittered away this series with a 9-0 skunking that was every bit as emasculating as the score would indicate.

Of baseball's previous 50 incarnations of Game 7, just three came by a larger margin of victory. None,