All of us have our biases, and one I freely acknowledge is a predisposition against the American League. It’s the designated hitter rule that does it. No one will ever really convince me that a game played with a 10-man lineup is really baseball.

With that prejudice confessed, it should be clear that I’m arguing against my interests in contending that the junior circuit, which was clearly and demonstrably superior to the senior one last year, has gotten better this year. What’s worse for those who enjoy seeing pitchers hit is that not only has the AL improved, its best teams have done the best job with their resources.

Atop any list of the off-season winners must be the defending pennant winner, the Detroit Tigers, and the Yankees. The Tigers, with an impressive mix of young players and veterans who can still play well, only had one obvious need, and that was for a lineup anchor with a high on-base average. Trading some live arms for Gary Sheffield was therefore quite the wise idea. Sheffield, who will be 38 this year, posted a fine .355 OBA in limited time last year; it was the first time it had dipped below .379 since 1993. When you win the pennant and then fill your one need, you’re counted a winner. The Yankees did an even better job, by clearing out Sheffield, Jaret Wright, Randy Johnson, and other expensive veterans while filling out the pitching staff with several of the best starters available on the market, who were signed to short-term contracts. The rest of the league should be scared of these teams.

The clubs that did the next best jobs were, alarmingly, also among the league’s elite. Boston can be marked down a bit for the drama surrounding the contract of hangnail-prone outfielder J.D. Drew, which was finally settled yesterday after four years of negotiations, but they also picked up a fine middle infielder in Julio Lugo and the best available player in starter Daisuke Matsuzaka, filling clear needs with both moves. Chicago, meanwhile, took advantage of the ludicrous market for starting pitching by shipping off two starters at the likely peak of their value — Freddy Garcia and Brandon McCarthy — while receiving a bounty of high-end prospects in return. Everyone says that cheap, adequate pitching is the most valuable thing in the game; Chicago GM Kenny Williams, unusually, actually acts like he believes it. Good for him.

Praise should also be given to two perennially awful clubs that managed, for once, to do good things. In the case of Tampa Bay, it was doing nothing. This is notable because they have several prospects, like Delmon Young, B.J. Upton, and Elijah Dukes, who on talent and performance rank as some of the very best in the game, and who also have legitimate character problems that have affected their development in concrete ways. Rather than trading them for pennies on the dollar, the Devil Rays have held on to them. For a team like the Mets, that might not be wise — for a team that’s never had a winning season, the thing to do is hold on to whatever talents you have, however flawed, until you can either fix them or get equal return. In the case of Kansas City, it was doing something. They got rid of a bunch of burned-out pitching prospects who were never going to do anything with the team and were living off old promise. Some of them, like Ambiorix Burgos, now with the Mets, will likely go on to success, but the Royals to actually show themselves capable of clearing the ground before they try to build is a new and welcome development. They did make a truly indefensible move in signing bad pitcher Gil Meche for $55 million, but even that counts as a good thing—this team is so bad that even having a starter of major league caliber represents an improvement, and it’s not like there was much else to spend the money on.

Where the strength of the American League really shows is in the number of serious contenders who can be said to have had bad winters only in the sense that they didn’t improve in areas where they could have done so. Cleveland, for instance, has a young core comparable to that of the mid-’90s Yankees, and could probably use one last superstar to make them a monster. They didn’t get that superstar, but they did get valuable role players, and they’re still the equal of any team in the game on paper. Minnesota would have done well to pick up some pitching, with the retirement of Brad Radke and injury to phenom Francisco Liriano; as is, they have the two best players in the American League and the defending MVP, so the fact that they avoided any bad moves is probably enough. Finally, Oakland should have the pitching to rebound from the loss of Barry Zito and remain a contender; one just wonders if Mike Piazza will really prove an adequate replacement for Frank Thomas, and if the A’s couldn’t have cobbled up one more bat.

For all that is good and praiseworthy in this league, though, there were certainly plenty of dumb and harmful moves; they just seem to be relatively concentrated. Toronto, for instance, signed on adequate first baseman Lyle Overbay through age 34 for no evident reason; Los Angeles, in a fairly silly move, committed nearly as much cash to fourth outfielder Gary Matthews Jr. as Miguel Tejada makes; Texas, as the centerpiece of the off-season, traded their best pitching prospect for Chicago’s McCarthy, whose signal flaw — his susceptibility to the home run — will be amplified in their park .

Worst off, though, were two teams that have no reason to be as bad as they are — they have great ballparks, plenty of money, and devoted fans. They’re just run badly. The Orioles made their annual roster churn of guys you didn’t know were still in the league; they signed up Jay Payton, Aubrey Huff, Danys Baez, Jaret Wright, and other guys who were considered promising seven years ago, and lost similar players like La-Troy Hawkins and Rodrigo Lopez, to no real effect either way. Just a big waste of time. The Mariners, though, should win an award. They brought in Rey Ordonez, of all people, a perfectly symbolic move for an off-season in which they moved gravely flawed but valuable young talent like Chris Snelling and Rafael Soriano for players who aren’t even any good, like Horacio Ramirez and Jose Vidro, a passable offensive second baseman who will now DH. That’s the American League for you, and it’s what you get with faux baseball. Hopefully the NL will at some point make a stand for honor and tradition; after this winter, it doesn’t look like it will be this year.

tmarchman@nysun.com