Ranking MLB's best offenses, post-winter meetings edition - ESPN

Player movement, so far this hot stove season, has tilted heavily in the direction of pitching. That's true both in terms of money spent and the sheer amount of activity.

Of course, the single biggest move of the offseason involved a hitter, with Juan Soto's mind-bending contract with the Mets shifting a whole of slew of runs and wins in the direction of Citi Field.

Now that Soto is off the board, where does that slot the Mets in the pecking order of offenses around baseball? Are they elite? Who is? Who might join the club?

Using a combination of my team forecasts and some detail from the Steamer Projection system, I've pegged the top 10 offenses right now, with the emphasis on right now. We just wrapped up the winter meetings, and after Soto, most of the free agent board for hitters remains unsettled. And while there has been plenty of trade smoke in the rumor mill, we haven't seen a great deal of fire.

These rankings will change before we reach spring training. Beyond slotting the team offenses as they stand, we'll speculate at what those changes might look like.

Note: Teams are ranked by a hitting index based on each club's current park-neutral run projection. The average index is 100 — one standard deviation above that is 110, two above is 120, etc.

Hitting index: 119.2

Best trait: They haven't done anything yet on the hitting side.

Worst trait: Batting average.

The Dodgers are basically good at everything. Well, they project to rank 26th in singles, so there you go. Even so, their worst trait doesn't mean they are bad even in this area — L.A. ranks eighth in projected average. It's just their least-great category, and even this minor pockmark is by design, not error.

The depth chart is short an above-average bat,