The Winter Meetings, after all, are not the entire MLB offseason, and let's not forget that Aaron Nola (Phillies) and Sonny Gray (Cardinals) were plucked from the board before the calendar even flipped to December. While we did see a handful of second-tier signings and trades, the Winter Meetings were largely uneventful save for the blockbuster noted below. So to give you the view from above and set the stage for the (vast) remainder of the offseason, let's unfurl a few Winter Meetings takeaways for your uplift and enrichment.

No, it wasn't the most frantic of Winter Meetings in the annals of such things, but important transactions went down, momentum was established, foundations were laid, hands were shaken, and roundly misleading expense reports were submitted. Yes, the protracted industry hootenanny in Nashville drew to a close on Thursday, and that means it's time for some partially forced reactions to what went down over those four or five days, depending upon how you count the start and end dates. It's also over – this year's edition, anyway. The noun 'Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings' contains five capitalized words, so straightaway you know it's of grave importance.