Braves Waiver Trading 101: All You Need to Know

Padres starting pitcher

(33) pitches against the Colorado Rockies during the first inning at Petco Park. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

The ‘Gotchas’

There are several “gotchas” to the claiming process:  you can impress your office-mates by knowing these!

The obvious one is that if your team puts in a claim, you must have both 40-man and 25-man roster spots available – or at least planned for – in case you win the claim… and the player.  But we’ll get to all that.

1. The simple case:  if all teams choose not to put in an objection claim for a given player after the 48-hour window, that player may then be freely traded to any other team — just like the rules allowed before August.  Nobody objected, so the restrictions are removed… except for a little detail that I’ll cover in Item #4 below.

2. The fun part: a waiver claim is made. Let’s use an example of James Shields, since he could be an interesting case. His contract requires another $7 million payment this year, but is $21 million for each of the next 3 years with an option in 2019. It is exactly for that financial reason he will probably clear waivers unclaimed.  But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the New York Yankees put in a claim. What happens then?

Here are the options after a claim:

• a. Revocation of Waivers. The Padres can choose to pull Shields back to their side of the void… that’s the “revocable” part of revocable waivers. This is effectively a team saying “PSYCH – I wasn’t really trying to trade this guy.” He still belongs to the original squad…. but of course they still gotta pay him.
• b. A Trade.  San Diego can try to negotiate a trade…. exclusively with the Yankees, since they were the claimants (they asserted their right to object — and are rewarded with this right of exclusivity). That trading opportunity window is limited — 48 more hours. If they cannot get together on a deal in that time frame, then the Padres can still pull Shields back to them… OR they can…
• c. Give the Player away.   At the Padres’ option, the claimed player can simply be given away — entire salary and all — to the claiming team.  This is why the higher-salaried players will often clear waivers:  because of the risk that it’s simply a salary dump ploy. So while the initial dinner date (the waiver claim) might be relatively cheap, you might regret it in the morning.  See the ‘Nuclear Weapons’ section later.

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