What were these people thinking?

We baseball fans like to complain. It’s the nature of the endeavor. Being a fan is about 99% disappointing. The other 1% makes it all worthwhile, but in between the peaks, there are many valleys.

Part of it is just how unlikely it is that your team is going to win the World Series. Even fan bases who are relatively spoiled — like those who root for the Dodgers — will likely end any given season unhappy. The Dodgers are a dynasty of a sort, to be sure, but they’ve still only won two World Series since Ronald Reagan left the White House.

Because of all of this sorrow, we want our teams to do something about it. We want them to address every shortcoming, fill every hole, spend every dime they can shake loose from their piggy banks. Most teams do stuff over the winter, some of it even to improve their rosters, but there’s always more stuff they could do. Even the Dodgers didn’t sign every free agent.

In what has become an annual attempt to assuage a few of these consternations, we’re going to focus on the things that did not get done over the winter.

We’re also going to suggest why they didn’t happen because, believe it or not, your team might have had a very good reason not to do the thing you wanted them to do. Or … maybe not.

Then we can really get angry.