Don’t forget to check out Winners and Losers: National League for the senior circuit breakdown.

Winners

Tigers: Detroit gave up a lot, but they acquired Edgar Renteria, Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera. They also re-signed Kenny Rogers for one year, $8 million and gave Willis a three-year contract extension worth $29 million. With these moves the Tigers have established themselves as the best team in the AL Central. They also have Timo Perez.

Rays: Andrew Friedman’s administration has made four main deals, all of them good. First, they acquired Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett and Eduardo Morlan from the Twins for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris and Jason Pridie. Here the Rays dealt from their strength in hitting to acquire pitching strength in the young, pre-arbitration Matt Garza. Delmon Young is one of the finest young hitters in baseball, but he does have character and plate discipline issues which may hamper his future development. An understated aspect of this deal was the exchange of Harris for Bartlett, a swap of one of the game’s worst defensive shortstops for one of the very best.

The Rays are going to do their best to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox, and it’s going to start this year. However, they are doing it in a new way, a way that does not compromise the team’s future by signing famous names and trading potential for presence. They have filled some holes sensibly, getting excellent value in a two year, $8 million deal with Troy Percival and a one year, $3 million deal with Cliff Floyd that includes a 2009 club option.

Finally, the team dealt Elijah Dukes to the Nationals for a young minor league pitcher. Dukes is a fine player, but his off-field issues are real and seriously distracting, unlike those of another new Washington outfielder. In addition, the Rays have had too many quality outfielders for years, but dealing Pride, Young and Dukes now leaves the spots open for Rocco Baldelli, Carl Crawford, and a platoon of Floyd and Johnny Gomes.

Athletics: Billy Beane got a real nice return for Dan Haren, and good one for Nick Swisher. Of course, one could argue that Beane is selling the team short in giving up young, pre-free agency players—especially Nick Swisher, who earns only $7 million per year for the next five years—but it’s the right move. He’s stockpiling prospects, conceding the division to the Angels in order to compete about two years from now. The Athletics aren’t the Red Sox, and sometimes they have to rebuild. Beane should be commended for going all out in this endeavor.

Red Sox: So far, so good. They retained Curt Schilling, Mike Timlin, Tim Wakefield and Julian Tavarez, each for one year terms at excellent prices. It’s not fair that a team that has as much money and is as well run as Boston can get a quality player like Schilling to take a big discount to play for them. Mike Lowell also took a discount at three years, $37.5 million. Boston may be wary of deals like this for somewhat overrated 33-year old third basemen coming off career years, but the fans, the media, and Lowell himself made it easy on them. He’s a Fenway Park hitter with more value for Boston than anyone else, but the Red Sox didn’t get great by signing checks like these; they should be careful.

On the Santana front, the Red Sox have deftly countered the Yankees, driving the price up for a guy they could use, but don’t need. They have refrained from offering too much, but maintained a serious pursuit. We’ll find out the rest of the story later, of course, but for now the Sox have handled the negotiations admirably (unlike their main rivals).

Yankees: How can a team sign the best player in baseball to an arguably below-market contract and still be this low on the list? For a couple of reasons: First, by signing A-Rod for ten years, Posada for four, and Rivera for three, the Yankees are committing themselves a little bit further to age and inflexibility. Each deal was a little bit too long. They did retain the irreplaceable parts of their team, but at what cost? These deals show the Yankees to be a team that will continue to be less efficient with their money than the Red Sox. Of course, the Yanks are going with youth in other areas, and it’s hard to indicate a better course of action for the organization than the one they have followed. In other moves, Brian Cashman retained Andy Pettitte at fair value, signed Jose Molina as the backup catcher and brought aboard Latroy Hawkins to replace Luis Vizaino. Of course, their biggest move may be yet to come.

Orioles: It’s baffling, but here they are. They haven’t made any mistakes, and they got some return for Miguel Tejada. They also drafted four guys in the Rule 5; who knows what they’ll do with all of them? If the Orioles can get a meaningful prospect or two for Brian Roberts and a large haul from the Mariners for Erik Bedard, this could be the first great O’s offseason in many years.

Neutral

Twins: Yes, they acquired Delmon Young, a potential superstar. But they also gave up Matt Garza, Eduardo Morlan and an excellent defensive shortstop in Jason Bartlett. In the deal they acquired Brendan Harris, a bad defensive player with a good bat, especially versus lefties. Then they acquired Adam Everett, a terrible offensive player whose stellar defense actually makes him an above-average shortstop. Finally, to complement this assortment the Twins signed Mike Lamb to a two year, $6.6 million. Lamb—get this—is a bad defensive player with a good enough bat, especially when compared to the third basemen the Twins have employed in the past three seasons. So how does all this add up? Where do Alexi Casilla and Nick Punto play? We’re not sure.

However, it is strange to me that the Twins, who will get Francisco Liriano back next season and have an offense anchored by Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, are giving up so easily and desperately seeking a deal for Johan Santana. The team could just as easily have signed Mike Cameron, and fielded an outfield of Cameron, Delmon Young and Michael Cuddyer, and made a run for it in 2008.

Indians: The two-year deal for Masahide Kobayashi was a very good one, and acquiring Jamey Carroll from the Rockies was a nice touch. But what have they done to keep up with the Tigers?

Blue Jays: They acquired Marcus Scutaro and signed Matt Stairs for two more years, David Eckstein for one year, and Reed Johnson for one. They’re close to having a losing offseason since the organization has to do more than this to escape fourth place.

Rangers: I guess signing Kazuo Fukumori to a two-year $3 million deal is okay. What’s the point, though? The Rangers also dealt two pretty good young pitchers for “fantastic story” Josh Hamilton. It sounds nice, but again, what’s the point? Hamilton is a good player, but are the Rangers looking to compete in the AL West next year? Jon Daniels also drafted four guys in the Rule 5, traded for Chris Shelton and Ben Broussard (who was later signed for 1 year, $3.35 million), signed Milton Bradley, and re-signed Joaquin Benoit.

Losers

Mariners: Signing Carlos Silva to a four year deal = uncreative and terrible. Not offering arbitration to Jose Guillen = inexcusable. Trading Ben Broussard for nothing = whatever.

Angels: They overpaid an overrated center fielder they didn’t even need for the second year in a row. This was after they dealt a solid bat, Orlando Cabrera, for a pitcher, Jon Garland, when they needed to do the opposite. It remains to be seen whether Tony Reagins can rectify some of these errors in a deal for Paul Konerko.

Royals: The Royals have opened their checkbook, but like the Reds, they’re spending the money on the wrong people. First: Jose Guillen. The Mariners wanted him so much that they declined a $9 million option and didn’t even offer him arbitration. He’s been ridiculously fluky and has character problems that saw him to eight different teams in nine years. On top of that, he was suspended for the first 15 days of the 2008 season for purchasing HGH. That was one day after the Royals signed him for three years, $36 million. Whoops.

Kansas City didn’t stop there. They signed LOOGY Ron Mahay for two years, $8 million, and Japanese righty Yasuhiko Yabuta for two years, $6 million. Are relievers really a good priority, or are they just affordable players to spend money on to look like you’re doing something? KC also gave Miguel Olivo $2 million for his services: namely, a 9:1 K/BB rate. I suppose the Royals are now the prohibitive favorites to win the AL Central?

White Sox: It was mean-spirited of the baseball gods to give a World Series to this wrong-headed Chicago organization; they’ve been making fools of themselves ever since. The first half of this offseason has been no exception. First the team extended sub-.300 OBP shortstop Juan Uribe for one year, $4.5 million, and then traded for shortstop Orlando Cabrera. Now they’re looking to trade Uribe. More terribly, the White Sox did what all badly run teams do when they’re trying to make a splash: they threw a bunch of money and a multi-year contract at a “big name reliever,” in this case, Scott Linebrink. The signing is even worse than it seems because Linebrink was a Type A free agent and the White Sox will have to surrender a draft pick.

Next, Kenny Williams acquired Carlos Quentin from the Diamondbacks for Chris Carter. This is good because the team is finally conscious of its on-base weaknesses and made a move to fix it, but they likely overpaid for Quentin, whose numbers are inflated by his ballpark. Finally, the Sox dealt their two best pitching prospects and another top young player to the Athletics for Nick Swisher. Swisher is very good, young, cheap, and extraordinarily patient, but he’s not exactly a one-of-a-kind player. Kenny Williams paid a lot, and for what? The team still has no chance to win their division. On a good note, the White Sox did rid themselves of two notorious scrappers in Scott Podsednik and Darin Erstad.