Winners and losers from this year's Winter Meetings

	The Royals turned many heads by signing Gil Meche to a deal worth $55 million. AP
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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Generally speaking, the biggest winners at the Winter Meetings were players, player agents and the Players' Association. And the biggest loser was common sense, which took a beating here.

The few sensible contracts (Sean Casey for $4 million, Randy Wolf for $8 million, Moises Alou for $8.5 million) were done before anyone got to Disney, the happiest place on earth this week if you can play a lick (or, in some cases, even if you can't). Here's the final score sheet, the winners and losers from the Winter Meetings.

Winners

1. Mediocre pitchers. Ted Lilly, who has more career non-quality starts than quality starts, got $40 million for four years. A day later, Gil Meche, who had all of eight quality starts last year, got $55 million for five years from the Royals. I'll say one thing, neither Lilly nor Meche was a quality signing.

2. Carlos Zambrano. The pitching market is nuts. And this guy will be a free agent in one year. He's 25, he's even better than Barry Zito. And guess what, he can hit, too.

3. A.J. Burnett. Can anyone now question the $55 million the ultra-talented Burnett got from Toronto after Meche got the same?

4. Agent Greg Landry. He's Meche's agent/magician. As one competing agent put it, "He deserves a medal.''

5. Billy Beane, A's GM. He was here all of five minutes (one day, actually), and he got two deals done -- one for Mike Piazza ($8.5 million for one year), the other for Alan Embree ($5.4 million for two). He also scared up some publicity for talking to the Mets about deals for one of two top pitchers, Danny Haren or Rich Harden.

6. The Dodgers. I've got to say that in this market Jason Schmidt looks pretty good for $47 million and Wolf looks like a steal for $8 million. Look at it this way, the Dodgers got both pitchers for the price of Meche. One quibble: silly of GM Ned Colletti to go bonkers about J.D. Drew opting out of the $33 million remaining on his deal when there's double that out there for him. Would Colletti like a chance to double his own pay?

7. Older GMs. It was senior week in Orlando. Phillies GM Pat Gillick proved that he still has a few tricks up his sleeves. After taking a chance on Adam Eaton for $24 million (which doesn't look quite as bad now, not after Meche), and overpaying for Wes Helms ($5.45 million, two years), he made the biggest trade that went through by landing Freddy Garcia, a winner and big-game pitcher. Braves GM John Schuerholz made another great move, picking up talented reliever Rafael Soriano from Seattle.

8. J.D. Drew. From the time he came into the game, nobody's played the market better (with the aid of agent Scott Boras). Now if Drew can just stay on the field like he did two of the last three years.

9. Scott Boras. If not for Meche, the Drew contract would have been the most over-the-top. Still, Boras was by far the biggest free-agent mover. Has anyone noticed he had three former Cy Young winners to sell this year (Eric Gagne, Greg Maddux and Zito), four if you count Daisuke Matsuzaka, the 2001 winner of the Sawamura award, which goes to the best pitcher in Japan?

10. The Padres. They made the right call to stay out of the game for the really expensive players, then imported Maddux, a four-time Cy Young winner and lifetime 333-game winner for $16 million guaranteed. Not too shabby.