Baseball’s winter meetings came to a close in Nashville on Thursday. After four days of wheeling and dealing, plus a number of big-money free agent signings, Dirk Hayhurst picks his winners and losers of the MLB off-season so far.

Winner: Chicago Cubs

Unless your benchmark for success was the Back to the Future series spawned prophecy of a 2015 World Series championship, the Cubs exceeded expectations. Their ever-deepening pipeline of impact talent delivered ahead of schedule, propelling the club to the 2015 postseason, and in 2016 it should only get better. Seriously, buy someone a Cubs hat for Christmas.

Instead of rushing out to drop big money under a flowing banner of “Must. Win. Now!” the Cubbies are sticking to a plan that works - acquiring the talent they need to repeat and exceed while, at the same time, not leveraging themselves financially.

The Cubs taking a pass on David Price was wise. Joe Maddon’s history with Price, coupled with the young, competitive club in the hip and resurgent environment of Chi-Town may have been a pleasing vision we can all easily get our mind around, but it would have been a crippling financial blow.

Price is good, real good, but he’s not $31 million a year good. At least not for the Cubs, who will get more mileage out of young stars who’ve not even hit their ceiling yet, consistent role players, and lineup-balancing options like ultra utility man Ben Zobrist and Jason Heyward with his 6.5 WAR.

Adam Warren, John Lackey, Trevor Cahill, and Rex Brothers make the pitching stronger but don’t turn the club’s financial commitments into coal. But the best part is, the team’s easiest place to improve is an operational one already well within sight.

Consider that the Cubs lead all of baseball in strikeouts in 2015. When you’re one of the youngest and most talented teams in baseball with a glaring but correctable production issue that will, statistically speaking, self-correct with age and experience, there is little need to overdo it in the off-season.

Winner: Houston Astros

Everything that I just said about the Cubs getting better with age and experience applies here. Dallas Keuchel and Carlos Correa are just so good that you nearly forget about how young they are, and how many other talented players the club is putting out on the field.

After a gut-wrenching loss to the never-say-die Royals in the 2015, one where the ‘Stros essentially had an ALCS berth in hand, the Astros made it a priority to go and get a player they feel would have been the difference maker: Ken Giles.

Giles is a strikeout-machine closer—152 of them in 115 innings, plus a 1.81 FIP—with five years of club control. Jayson Stark over at ESPN calls him “Craig Kimbrel Lite,” but that may be an understatement. Kimbrel will be pitching in Boston next year, a meat-grinder market where failure to convert wins into saves is punishable by toxic media death.

Giles will be with the Astros in a powerful AL West, sure, but Houston is a great place for a youngster to come into his own as a role player, which is important to the psyche (something we’ll discuss in the losers’ section).  Expect Giles to make an immediate impact.

Winner: Boston Red Sox

They’re not growing talent in Boston—at least not like the Cubs and Astros are—but they’re finding it all the same, mostly by making splashy trades and baiting hooks with big piles of cash.

The BoSox needed bullpen help so they went and got Kimbrel. They needed starting pitching so they paid Price a king’s ransom. They needed an outfield bat, so they got Chris Young. They needed a setup man to protect the new closer, so they got Carson Smith.

Yes, Price is a massive financial deal, one that will probably not live up to the money in the contract, but he’ll give the club at least three or four solid years. Even better, he’s getting smarter and changing his pitching approach with age. His reliance on fastballs is still high, but he uses that fastball as a set up and execution pitch, not an over-powering all I got is heat pitch like so many aging fireballers struggle to realize. He was making good adjustments even before his time around Mark Buehrle, but I think his half season alongside one of baseball’s most consistent arms will pay dividends for the Red Sox.

Few teams have improved as much as the Red Sox have this off-season, but then again, few teams had to improve as much. New president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has done excellent work, making the club a threat for 2016. He’s not done yet. 

Loser: Los Angeles Dodgers

Bad management 101 dictates that when you have a closer who’s really good and doing great for your team, like the Dodgers do with Kenley Jansen, you go after a bigger one to replace him, like the Dodgers did in trying to acquire Aroldis Chapman. Why, exactly, the Dodgers felt they needed to do this at all is a bit of a mystery, one that not only has Kenley Jansen wondering about the team’s confidence in him, but most MLB watchdogs as well.

Just so we’re clear, closers are not like other relievers. Bullpens are funny place in that everyone wants to feel like they have a role to play and no role is clearer cut and coveted than that of the closer. A closer is often considered the best arm in the pen, and the pen’s champion. So, when you’re a great closer and your team goes out and gets another great closer, it’s like saying, “You’re good, but he’s better. We like him better, and he’s now got your job.” Merry Christmas, Kenley Jansen!

Then, to make matters worse, the deal explodes on the back of a alleged domestic violence incident involving Chapman, making everyone look bad, and turning Chapman into plutonium.

The Dodgers stepped out of one pile and into another one when they passed on resigning one of baseball’s best pitchers, Zack Greinke, then lost him to a division rival in the Arizona Diamondbacks.

That negotiation fell apart because the Dodgers didn’t want to give Greinke a guarantee deal into his age 37 season. Okay, I get that - age and career decline and right-handed pitching - it’s a thing. But why then did the Dodgers go out and sign Hisashi Iwakuma to a deal pushing into Iwakuma’s age 37 season? Iwakuma is cheaper, and allows for more flexibility, but are you going to get Greinke-like production from him? And, can you honestly tell me money is an issue now? For goodness sake, you almost double-dipped on stud closers and your history is littered with big-money acquisitions. I dunno L.A. I think you missed an opportunity.

Loser: Arizona Diamondbacks

“Sweet mother of God this had better work.” I mean, that’s what you have to be thinking if you’re the executive that convinced the front office to give the biggest pitching contract in baseball history to Greinke—$204 million for six years, or a whopping $34 million a year.

That’s a lot of money… for a small country. It's really a lot of money for a team that has mostly been getting the job done with a mid to small market payroll. I suppose if you factor in that that the Diamondbacks are covered in a $1.5-billion television rights deal for the next 20 years with Fox, it’s not so bad. But what is bad is how that sort of new money screws with some executives’ minds. This feels like one of those, “new money, all in, buy wins with star power” moves that frequently bust. Even with the upgrades, the Diamondbacks didn’t suddenly leap in front of the Dodgers or Giants—they just become more competitive.

Then there is that Shelby Miller trade the Diamondbacks made. They got a very talented 25-year-old pitcher in Miller, but giving up a pair of top 100 prospects and an impact major leaguer in Ender Inciarte is, well, a lot. The kind of a lot that—with the Greinke deal—makes you wonder if the front office really knows how to evaluate the price and impact of talent.

Loser: Colorado Rockies (with an honourable mention to the Washington Nationals)

Ugh. What a mess. The Rockies had 93 losses in the regular season and, as if such a thing were possible, the team has continued that losing streak right on into the off-season.

If the goal of assembling a team is to acquire talent good enough to help you make it to the post season, you can see my confusion at why the Rockies would give a two-year, $10-million deal to Jason Motte, who was left off the Cubs postseason roster. 

Blue Jays fans are very familiar with Jose Reyes, the Rockies’ shortstop, who plead not guilty to a charge of domestic abuse in a Maui court in November. Even if the Rockies want to deal Reyes to a team like, say, the Washington Nationals, who could really use a veteran middle infielder after dealing away Yunel Escobar for bullpen help, the questions surrounding his legal issues make him untradeable.

It’s probably for the best. The Nationals already have enough issues on their team. Jonathan Papelbon, their closer, just hit the club with a grievance over his September suspension following a dugout run-in with teammate Bryce Harper.

The Nationals have done a lot of smart wheeling and dealing, but a talented middle infield is a hell of thing to go without. It makes every aspect of the team’s upgraded pitching weaker.

Dirk Hayhurst played in Major League Baseball for the San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays before retiring from the pros in 2011. Hayhurst wrote several books about his experiences in the game, including The Bullpen Gospels, Wild Pitches and Bigger Than The Game.