With good reason, MLB.com was all enthused about the recently concluded winter meetings.

“GMs dealing right to the end,” read one headline on the website.

Declared another: “Think these meetings were crazy? Try ’92.”

In what could have been a good historical piece, though, MLB.com omitted some important elements of the 1992 winter meetings:

• Bud Selig, only three months into his role as interim or acting commissioner, declared an end to the annual event because he felt player agents had hijacked the meetings. In the first three days of the 1992 meetings in Louisville, 35 free agents signed contracts worth $225 million. In today’s dollars that total would be $385 million.
• Barry Bonds jumped to San Francisco for $43.75 million, a record contract that included what at the time was the highest single-season salary in the game’s history – $8.5 million.
• Bonds’ departure from Pittsburgh triggered what would become a major league-record 20-year losing streak for the Pirates, 20 successive seasons of losing won-lost records. Bonds’ exit led him to record-breaking home run feats and allegedly to reputation-ruining use of steroids.
• Greg Maddux, snubbing a better offer from the New York Yankees, bolted to Atlanta and would help pitch the Braves to 10 of their unparalleled 14 consecutive division titles.
• David Cone accepted a record $9 million signing bonus from the Kansas City Royals
• Carl Barger, president of the expansion Florida Marlins, collapsed and died outside the conference room where the owners were meeting. The 62-year-old executive suffered a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurism.

Barger died on the last day of the meetings. It was on the day before the meetings began that Bonds agreed to the Giants’ offer. He and his agent, Dennis Gilbert, and their entourage filed into the Cochran room of the Galt House Hotel at about 8 p.m., marched to the front of the room and waited for the news conference to begin.

They waited and waited and waited. No officials of the Giants appeared. Finally, Gilbert left the room, apparently summoned to a phone in an adjoining room. When he returned a few minutes later, he whispered to the others and led Bonds and their entourage out of the room. They exited through the kitchen. There would be no announcement that evening.

The announcement came in the same room 44 hours later.

The cause of the delay:

Bob Lurie, the Giants’ owner, was in the process of selling the team to a group headed by Peter Magowan. The Magowan group negotiated the Bonds contract, but Lurie still owned the team and hadn’t approved it. Between Sunday evening and Tuesday afternoon Lurie and Magowan worked out a way to make the contract work.

It took Selig five years to recuperate from the agent onslaught and allow the winter meetings to resume after a five-year hiatus.

Interestingly, one of the 1992 developments that might have influenced Selig’s decision to end the meetings was the defection during those meetings of Paul Molitor to Toronto after a 15-year career with Selig’s Milwaukee Brewers.

Making matters worse, Molitor helped the Blue Jays win their second successive World Series, batting .500 (12 for 24) with two doubles, two triples, two home runs, a .571 on-base percentage and a 1.000 slugging percentage. That’s a 1.571 OPS in today’s usage of statistics.

Hall-of-Famer Molitor attended his first winter meetings this year as the manager of the Minnesota Twins, who did a minimal job of filling his dugout with players who can help him lead the first Twins team in five years to win more than 70 games.

The Twins, who previously had brought back their old friend Torii Hunter as a free agent, set out to bolster their starting rotation and presumably did that by signing the second Santana, this one Ervin, in their history 15 years after Johan joined them.

That 4-year, $55 million signing, though, was only a blip on the winter meetings screen. To put the action into proper perspective, you have to start with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Given their activity in San Diego, I don’t see how the Dodgers can wait until next October.

I suspect they have already crowned themselves 2015 champions without finding it necessary to play the games. This is an organization that fired its general manager, Ned Colletti, even though he had built a two-year National League West champion.

Stan Kasten, the Dodgers’ president and CEO, learned when he was in a similar position in Atlanta that getting to the post-season is one thing, getting through it is another. The Braves might have gone to the playoffs 14 straight times, but they reached the World Series five times and won only once.

Kasten and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, though, presumably think if they get the right players, nothing can keep them from their appointed rounds.

If everything works out as the Dodgers expect, shortstop Jimmy Rollins and second baseman Howie Kendrick will replace Hanley Ramirez, gone to Boston as a free agent, and Dee Gordon, traded to Miami.

At week’s end, the Rollins deal with Philadelphia had not been completed, apparently awaiting completion of a physical for a player acquired in a trade with San Diego for Matt Kemp.

The Dodgers traded Kemp in an attempt to alleviate their crowded outfield. They also added to their already strong starting rotation by trading for Juan Nicasio and signing Brandon McCarthy, though that signing was also not official at week’s end.

Besides awaiting official completion of the Rollins trade and the McCarthy signing, the only matter to be determined was whether Friedman or Kasten would be named executive of the year once the Dodgers were officially anointed World Series champions, Friedman for acquiring the players or Kasten for acquiring Friedman.

The Miami Marlins seem to be as intent as the Dodgers in making a significant advance in 2015. They just won’t spend the amount of money the Dodgers will.

Having farther to go than the Dodgers, the Marlins followed up their stunning signing of their No. 1 slugger, Giancarlo Stanton, to a mind-boggling $325 million contract by their activity at the meetings.

The Marlins acquired Gordon from the Dodgers to play second base, lead off and steal bases. In the same trade they obtained starting pitcher Dan Haren, who has said he may retire rather than abandon his family in California.

A safer pitching addition was Mat Latos from Cincinnati. The Reds traded another pitcher, Alfredo Simon, to Detroit.

The Tigers also traded a pitcher, Rick Porcello, to the Boston Red Sox, who acquired two other pitchers, Justin Masterson and Wade Miley. None of the pitchers is Jon Lester, who opted to join the Chicago Cubs instead of rejoining the Red Sox, who traded him to Oakland last summer for Yoenis Cespedes. The Red Sox traded the Cuban outfielder to the Tigers for Porcello.

Despite the pitching acquisitions, the Red Sox rotation looks ordinary at best, much like that of their rivals in New York. In their attempt to improve on last season’s last-place finish, the Red Six signed Pablo Sandoval to play third base and Ramirez to move a few feet from his natural position, shortstop, and become acquainted with the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

Some publications and websites like to grade teams for what they do or don’t do at the winter meetings, as if those few days will determine what will happen once the season starts. I find that a silly exercise because three and a half months remain before the start of the season. That’s plenty of time for teams to sign free agents or make trades that could improve them.

Fans of some teams, the New York Mets, for one prime example, can only hope their favorite team will use that time wisely and productively. On the other hand, some fans – of the Mets, for example – know that is unlikely.