The Winter Meetings begin Sunday evening in Orlando, and that means a whole lot of news and rumors and major transactions to kick off the meat of the offseason.

Sometimes. But not most of the time.

Though the Winter Meetings do usually include a healthy dose of news, the event is never guaranteed to deliver the kind of blockbusters most fans and reporters crave. In today’s world of texting over face-to-face communication, there’s little urgency for general managers or agents to get things done during a frantic 72-hour window at a massive resort and convention center.

This has certainly held true for the Nationals over the years. They’ve made a handful of big signings or trades at previous Winter Meetings, but most of those more than a decade ago. And over the last five years, they’ve hardly done anything of real significance, a product both of the changing ways baseball transactions get made and the franchise’s changed objective to focus on long-term goals over short-term success.

Will Paul Toboni make big news in his first Winter Meetings running baseball operations? Stay tuned. In the meantime, let’s take a moment to look back in time and recall the handful of big-time signings and trades the Nationals have made at the annual offseason gathering. …

2005: THE SORIANO TRADE
Jim Bowden shocked everyone at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas with a late-night blockbuster deal to bring Alfonso Soriano to D.C. in exchange for Brad Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge and Armando Galarraga. The surprising part was the fact Soriano was only under club control for one season. Not to mention the fact he was a career second baseman, but the Nats already had an established second baseman in Jose Vidro. It all worked out in the end, with Soriano (eventually) agreeing to move to left field and then delivering only the fourth 40-40 season in MLB history at that point. Of course, he did become a free agent and signed an eight-year deal with the Cubs. But his one and only season in Washington remains as memorable as the surprise announcement of his acquisition.

2010: THE WERTH SIGNING
The Winter Meetings hadn’t officially begun yet on that Sunday afternoon, and plenty of folks were still en route to Orlando when the news broke (including yours truly). But this was easily the biggest signing the Nationals had ever made, and it remains the biggest news they’ve ever made at the Winter Meetings. Though we knew the team was trying to lure a prominent free agent to D.C. for the first time, we didn’t know they’d actually land one, nor that they would be willing to offer a seven-year deal (two more than any other club) to make it happen. Mike Rizzo basked in the glory that evening as the Nats for the first time announced to the baseball world they were ready to be taken seriously.

2016: THE EATON TRADE
The Nationals didn’t have to travel far for these Winter Meetings, which were held just outside town at National Harbor. The news they created with an unexpected trade for White Sox outfielder Adam Eaton, though, traveled around the country in minutes and lefty plenty of outside observers stunned. Not that Eaton wasn’t a solid player whose gritty approach seemed like a good fit for a lineup that sorely needed someone like that. But the package Rizzo had to give up to get him (Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, Dane Dunning) felt excessive. We can still debate to this day if he gave up too much. What we can’t debate is Eaton’s legitimate value to the team, especially during the 2019 World Series run.

2019: THE STRASBURG RE-SIGNING
Still beaming from the title they clinched barely one month earlier, the Nationals were front-and-center at these Winter Meetings in San Diego, because two World Series stars were now among the top available free agents on the market. It became clear they were only going to be able to re-sign one of Stephen Strasburg or Anthony Rendon, not both. They went with Strasburg, who was willing to accept deferrals in his seven-year, $245 extension. Rendon, who was not, signed an identical deal (minus the deferrals) with the Angels two days later. Both contracts, as it turned out, were disasters that will continue to impact their respective franchises through the 2026 season.

Those are the four big Winter Meetings transactions in Nationals history, but there are a few other notable ones from the last two decades. In 2007, they made what seemed like a minor trade with the Yankees (Jonathan Albaladejo for Tyler Clippard) that wound up a huge win for them in the long run. Two years later in Indianapolis, they signed a future Hall of Famer in Ivan Rodriguez to a two-year contract. In 2012 at the Opryland Resort in Nashville, they tried to bolster an already loaded rotation with the signing of former All-Star Dan Haren for $13 million. (He proved to be a bust.) And while Strasburg and Rendon stole the headlines in 2019, the Nats did sign another free agent who didn’t garner much attention then but wound up spending the next 5 1/2 seasons anchoring their bullpen: Kyle Finnegan.