Seattle ace Felix Hernandez is reportedly baseball's top-paid pitcher. (AP)

The $200 million pitcher is coming. Soon. The only question is whether it will be Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw or David Price.

Baseball will cross that threshold because the Seattle Mariners on Thursday set a new standard. They had options. They had choices. They had two full years left on Felix Hernandez's contract. Which means they could have kept him for both seasons. Or held on until a desperate team forked over a cache of prospects in July 2014. Or rode another year and bubbled over the hot stove with him. Or flipped him for a bounty at this year's deadline. All those choices – all those options – and they still felt compelled to give him $175 million, the biggest sum ever for a pitcher in a deal first reported by USA Today that will keep him as the jewel of the Pacific Northwest for another seven seasons.

If Felix made it seven-eighths of the way to $200 million with next-to-no leverage, it's frightening to think what the supercharged moneymaking machine that is Major

Editor’s note: Yahoo! Sports will examine the offseason of every MLB team before spring training begins in mid-February. Our series continues with the Atlanta Braves.

MLB Springboards: No. 30 Astros | No. 29 Marlins | No. 28 Mets | No. 27 Rockies | No. 26 Twins | No. 25 Pirates | No. 24 Indians | No. 23 Mariners | No. 22 Padres | No. 21 Cubs | No. 20 Brewers | No. 19 Red Sox | No. 18 White Sox | No. 17 Royals | No. 16 Orioles | No. 15 Phillies | No. 14 Diamondbacks | No. 13 Athletics | No. 12 Rangers | No. 11 Yankees | No. 10 Rays | No. 9 Cardinals | No. 8 Giants | No. 7 Tigers

2012 record: 94-68
Finish: Second place, NL East
2012 final payroll: $97.3 million
Estimated 2013 opening day payroll: $88 million
Yahoo! Sports offseason rank: 6th
Hashtags: #uptown #leadership #racistlogos #oldschool #bustedwing #nastyboys #tinystarters #givemetheremote #medlen4cy #blunt

OFFSEASON ACTION

One Upton was plenty. The Atlanta Braves, craving a right-handed bat, athleticism, youth

MLB Springboards: No. 30 Astros | No. 29 Marlins | No. 28 Mets | No. 27 Rockies | No. 26 Twins | No. 25 Pirates | No. 24 Indians | No. 23 Mariners | No. 22 Padres | No. 21 Cubs | No. 20 Brewers | No. 19 Red Sox | No. 18 White Sox | No. 17 Royals | No. 16 Orioles | No. 15 Phillies | No. 14 Diamondbacks | No. 13 Athletics | No. 12 Rangers | No. 11 Yankees | No. 10 Rays | No. 9 Cardinals | No. 8 Giants

2012 record: 88-74
Finish: First place, AL Central
2012 final payroll: $140.7 million
Estimated 2013 opening day payroll: $150 million
Yahoo! Sports offseason rank: 7th

Hashtags: #resignverlander #mashgame #cardboardpizza #slackers #shinyobjects #rug #scratchmybackproletariat #fauxlineups #surplus #oldrichguys

OFFSEASON ACTION

Nothing in sports beats a rich, old owner who turns a championship hunt into his

Editor’s note: Yahoo! Sports will examine the offseason of every MLB team before spring training begins in mid-February. Our series continues with the San Francisco Giants.

2012 record: 94-68
Finish: First place, NL West
2012 final payroll: $138.1 million
Estimated 2013 opening day payroll: $137 million
Yahoo! Sports offseason rank: 8th
Hashtags: #signbuster #whatthehell #lettimmysmoke #westcoastbeantown #gmjr #trustsabes #thesixmilliondollarreliever #potatoflakes #wysiwyg #morepitching

MLB Springboards: No. 30 Astros | No. 29 Marlins | No. 28 Mets | No. 27 Rockies | No. 26 Twins | No. 25 Pirates | No. 24 Indians | No. 23 Mariners | No. 22 Padres | No. 21 Cubs | No. 20 Brewers | No. 19 Red Sox | No. 18 White Sox | No. 17 Royals | No. 16 Orioles | No. 15 Phillies | No. 14 Diamondbacks | No. 13 Athletics | No. 12 Rangers | No. 11 Yankees | No. 10 Rays | No. 9 Cardinals

OFFSEASON ACTION

There is comfort in the familiar and comfort in the successful, and the gap between the

2012 record: 88-74
Finish: Second place, NL Central

2012 final payroll: $115.4 million

Estimated 2013 opening day payroll: $114 million
Yahoo! Sports offseason rank: 9th
Hashtags: #magicloogy #sameoldsameold #wainosback #oscarsnoslouch #victormartewtf #bfib #nogenius #gocrazy #nomadicsinker #notagainjaime

OFFSEASON ACTION

There is no panic in St. Louis, none of the requisite worries that accompany a team that thrice whiffed when staring at a spot in the World Series. Something that close being yanked away demands something – a trade, a signing, a splash of some manner or variety – but then the St. Louis Cardinals run themselves with an admirable amount of discipline, happy to guide themselves via internal temperature rather than external heat.

Adam Wainwright went 14-13 with a 3.94 ERA last season. (Getty Images)Thus, an offseason in which they lose their best pitcher from last

Editor's note: Yahoo! Sports will examine the offseason of every MLB team before spring training begins in mid-February. Our series continues with the Tampa Bay Rays.

MLB Springboards: No. 30 Astros | No. 29 Marlins | No. 28 Mets | No. 27 Rockies | No. 26 Twins | No. 25 Pirates | No. 24 Indians | No. 23 Mariners | No. 22 Padres | No. 21 Cubs | No. 20 Brewers | No. 19 Red Sox | No. 18 White Sox | No. 17 Royals | No. 16 Orioles | No. 15 Phillies | No. 14 Diamondbacks | No. 13 Athletics | No. 12 Rangers | No. 11 Yankees

2012 record: 90-72
Finish: Third place, AL East

 2012 final payroll: $70.4 million
Estimated 2013 opening day payroll: $62 million
Yahoo! Sports offseason rank: 10th

Hashtags: #realfiscalcliff #price2.0 #smelltest #awilandaway #robin #tafka #foreclosedonshortstops #permutation #chopchopchop #tvpoverty

OFFSEASON ACTION

The perpetual motion of the Tampa Bay Rays – the wheeling, dealing, gap-filling, margin-squeezing, inefficiency-hunting ways that define

Major League Baseball plans on interviewing all of the players accused of receiving performance-enhancing drugs from the Biogenesis clinic, though the league hopes first to obtain the documents that tied Alex Rodriguez and other major leaguers to human growth hormone and synthetic testosterone before moving forward with potential disciplinary action, sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Alex Rodriguez has denied taking PEDs from the Miami clinic named in the report. (AP)League officials expect to travel to Florida in the coming days to discuss with Miami New Times editors and lawyers whether the newspaper, which broke the story Tuesday, will provide the league with the Biogenesis records implicating Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, and Gio Gonzalez, as well as the previously suspended Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Yasmani Grandal.

If the newspaper does release the records to the league, not only could it bolster MLB's case when arguing for potential 50-game suspensions for Rodriguez, Cruz and Gonzalez, it could provide an ever greater look at the scope of Biogenesis owner and

Alex Rodriguez looked me in the eyes. It was last May. His New York Yankees teammates were stretching on the field at Kauffman Stadium. I asked him if he had used performance-enhancing drugs since 2003. His face turned serious. He leaned forward. This was a new Alex, he swore. One who respected people and the game and told the truth.

"I have not," he said. "I would not."

Alex Rodriguez, 37, still has $114 million left on his Yankees deal. (AP)He never broke his stare, the product of all the time spent with the thousand-dollar-an-hour handlers who preached genuineness, as if that was something he could learn, as if a career-long fraud ever could be mistaken as real.

In Alex Rodriguez's world, one still infused with human growth hormone and synthetic testosterone as a bombshell Miami New Times report detailed Tuesday, there was no more potent cocktail than desperation and hubris. The continuum of A-Rod spans gifted to inept with all of the requisite bus stops in between. The marriage of his two prevailing character traits – how somebody so desperate