Quick Hits: Lohse, Soriano, Appel, Salaries

With the Winter Meetings completed, Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports lists the five winners and five losers from the gathering in Nashville.  A sampling: the Red Sox were "winners" for adding solid veterans like Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino, while the Angels were "losers" since the additions of Tommy Hanson and Joe Blanton don't represent an upgrade for the club's rotation.

Here's some more news from around the majors…

• The Red Sox "would be expected to jump in" on Kyle Lohse if he was willing to accept a three-year contract, writes ESPN Boston's Gordon Edes.  We heard during the Winter Meetings that the Red Sox and Angels were both interested in Lohse.
• Rafael Soriano may have made a mistake by opting out of his guaranteed $14MM from the Yankees in 2013, as there doesn't appear to be much of a remaining market for big-ticket closer contracts, writes SI.com's Tom Verducci.
• Scott Boras talked to Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about the Pirates' controversial military training regimen for minor leaguers and the Bucs' failure to sign right-hander Mark Appel, who the Pirates chose with the eighth overall selection in last year's amateur draft.  Boras believes the Pirates erred by not informing he and Appel about the pick beforehand: "There was no communication with us (before the draft). We would’ve been happy to have given them an advance (notice) that they could’ve used their pick in (another) way. We certainly would’ve let them know we didn’t have a fit there."
• The average salary amongst Major League players was $3.2MM in 2012, a rise of 3.8% from the 2011 season, reports Ronald Blum of the Associated Press.