Other good signings...
San Francisco doesen't do it often but they've made two good signings. Jeremy Affeldt is a good middle relief addition especially against lefties. His control was a question mark earlier in his career, but he has made great strides in fixing that problem.
Lets face it, the Giants didn't sign handsome Randy Johnson to help coach their young staff. Johnson should be a great addition to the rotation though, and will have a chance to be the last 300 game winner in baseball.
Felipe Lopez could be a very good signing for Arizona, they'll miss Orlando Hudson's defense, but Lopez, on the cheap, should give them close to the same offense.
Furcal for 30 million over three years is a steal. Without the recession, he gets four, maybe five years. The Dodgers would have had a gaping hole without this signing.
The Phillies, affectively, traded Pat Burrell for recent signee Raul Ibanez. Manuel shuddered at the thought of Burrell in left field. While Ibanez is below average defensively, he is not lost in left field. Ibanez is a blue collar player and should help the Phillies defend their title.
The bad signs....
The worst, Kyle Farnsworth gets 9.25 million from a team that cannot afford this bad of a signing, the Kansas City Royals. A set-up man with a WHIP of 1.53 and he gives up an over .300 average to RIGHT handed batters. A reliever like this can be had for the minimum. KC really goofed on this one.
Edgar Renteria. The Giants can't go through an off season without at least one bad signing. Really besides a little more in the power stats, I don't see much more out of Renteria than they could have expected out of Vizquel over a full year. I expect disagreement with that sentence, but I'll go even further and say that Vizquel is still the better defensive shortstop. 18.5 mil for two years won't haunt the Giants, but this is not a good sign.
I'll lump Sabathia,Burnett, and Dempster together here. Unless they are signing a young franchise pitcher such as Lincecum right now, owners should stay away from multi-year contracts with pitchers. They're ludicrous. They're expensive. They're wasteful.
Unless a team gets lucky with a Maddux or Glavine type who seem to keep injuries at a minimum, the odds are that they will not get their money's worth.
Dempster and Burnett, especially, do not have a previous good track record. Heck, really, I would rather sign Smoltz or Prior to a one year deal and hope for the best. If they blow out a rotater, it was a one year gamble and not five.
I start these posts with the intention of a few lines and it turns into a novel.
Sorry for the length.
While I agree with everything you said in principle (aside from that the Yanks payroll is much closer to 200 million), the Yankees worst defender by far was Giambi and they are replacing him with Tex who is actually quite good. Looking at Dewan's team numbers for this year, they may have been making as many as half of their bad plays at first base. They will still be a bad defensive team, but they should be bottom 10 instead of dead last with a bullet and that is one of their most significant upgrades of the offseason. Unless, of course, they ruin it by signing Manny.