If it’s cold where you are, don’t worry, because the MLB hot stove is so, so hot right now with Winter Meetings fueling the flames. Teams are making smart moves and crazy moves, sometimes even in the same transaction, but the moves are on the move and moving on up. Let’s check in on what’s been going on with a couple of teams who don’t get nearly enough attention from the mainstream sports media, the Cubs and the Yankees.

The Cubs’ front office has been very, very busy as of late, adding starting pitching by signing John Lackey to a three-year deal and adding relief pitching in a trade with the Rockies for Rex Brothers. They got hot and heavy in the position player market a couple of days ago when they signed Ben Zobrist to a four-year, $56 million deal.  

Switch-hitter Zobrist has quietly been one of the best players in baseball for a while now. As ESPN’s Jonah Keri points out, Zobrist is fourth in all of baseball by WAR from 2009 to date, and that doesn’t even account for the value added through his positional versatility. The Cubs were sort of a surprise team to sign Zobrist, who had been strongly linked to the Mets. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been particularly surprised since the Cubs kept Zobrist away from the team that just swept them out of the NLCS and reunited him with his longtime manager from his days in Tampa Bay, Joe Maddon.

One of the big reasons that the signing was surprising was that Zobrist had expressed a desire to play second base and it didn’t appear that the Cubs had a need there, with Starlin Castro on their roster. Well, before the ink had even dried on the Zobrist deal, Castro was off to New York in exchange for pitcher Adam Warren and Brendan Ryan. Similar to Billy Beane’s A’s trade with the Astros for Jed Lowrie, Theo Epstein and company appeared to be grabbing value wherever you can find it and then figure out the rest later.

The Cubs are definitely rolling the dice on Zobrist, as his defense, which has always been an important part of his value, seemed to be on the decline for the first time last year. Zobrist’s ability to play almost any position can hopefully offset any defensive decline, and some folks seem to be pretty high on Cubs prospect Gleyber Torres, so who knows what the Cubs’ lineup will look like in a couple of years.

The Yankees were all too happy to take Castro off the Cubs’ hands. In 2015, the Yankees hung around all year and made it to the Wild Card Game, despite the fact that they haven’t really had a second baseman since Robinson Cano left town for Seattle. While the Brian Roberts and Stephen Drew experiments were loads of fun for the fans, Brian Cashman decided that an everyday second basemen who is only 25 and has already made three All-Star Games was more important than the more important piece in the trade, Adam Warren. The Yankees have slowly and quietly been getting younger, and it’s starting to look like folks who were hoping all the huge contracts they were doling out to aging veterans were going to leave them burned may have to keep waiting.

Castro was a controversial player for the Cubs, prone to throwing errors and inconsistent hitting, but he’s certainly an upgrade for the Yankees. The Cubs also shed some salary by swapping out Castro for Zobrist and then picked up Warren, who could fit in at the back of the rotation, or soak up innings in the event another starter falters.

Just a day after all these other moves, Cashman was back to work, flipping reliever Justin Wilson to the Tigers for a couple of pitching prospects Luis Cessa and Chad Green (and that deal is still shaking out). Wilson was very good for the Yankees last year, with a 2.69 FIP in 74 games, where he struck out almost 10 batters per 9 and walked only 20 all year. The Yankees of late can, of course, conjure relievers out of thin air, so this move will, of course, work out fine for them.

There’s not really too much beef to be had with any of these moves, as all in all, it appears that both the Cubs and the Yankees have been improving this offseason. With all of the arms the Cubs have been stockpiling, they’re certainly hoping to go at least four wins deeper into the postseason next year, and preferably eight. The Yankees are, as usual, correcting the ship and looking like they might not fade away just yet.