OXON HILL, Md. _ Another annual round of winter meetings is done and once again the casualties mount. A host of baseball reporters are being treated for painful "Twitter thumb" and Post Rule 5 Draft Disorder.
The business of baseball, however, moves on.
As the meetings go, they were full of rumors (or you could use another term) but, as usual, the actual action was a bit less frenzied. There was not a single $100 million contract handed out. There was only one knee-buckling trade. And the Rangers stayed mostly in the background, doing what they absolutely needed to do _ re-sign Carlos Gomez _ and nothing more.
Now that the hoopla of the meetings is done, the offseason can move into a slower, but steadier pace. Teams can consider the lessons of the meeting, reconsider trade proposals on their home turf, reassess the landscape and then start putting together the second phase of their winter work. That is often more critical than anything that actually does get done at the meetings.
And so what exactly have we learned?
I mean, besides the fact that there are not enough sitting areas in the lobby of the Gaylord National Hotel, but plenty of restrooms.
Well, here's one attempt to sort through some of the detritus:
