LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – If you’ve never been to baseball’s winter meetings, allow me to set the scene.



There is a large hotel lobby. It has a humongous, plastic Christmas tree in the center. The closest coffee stand is a 15-minute walk away down a labyrinth of hallways, adjoining atriums or likely both, and it costs $7 a cup, and it tastes thin.



In every alcove and next to every potted palm you’ll find a person, probably male, probably white, probably somewhere near to middle-aged, milling about while hunched over and frowning at a glowing phone screen. Others are forming clumps and engaging in various forms of conversation, most of it banal. Their gazes constantly flicker over the tops of heads and from side to side.



At the winter meetings, no matter who you’re talking to, you are always looking for someone more important.



There are reporters and agents and wannabe agents and scouts and scouting directors and...