Atlanta Braves Might Be Involved, So Here is a Lesson in Waiver Trading

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 no team chooses 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 all 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 Ryan Braun, since he could be an interesting case. His contract requires another $7 million payment this year, but $80 million guaranteed through 2020.  It is exactly for that financial reason he will undoubtedly clear waivers unclaimed. But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the LA Dodgers put in a claim. What happens then?

Here are the options after a claim:

• a. Revocation of Waivers. The Brewers can choose to pull Braun 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. Milwaukee can try to negotiate a trade…. exclusively with the Dodgers, 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 Brewrs can still pull Braun back to them… OR they can…
• c. Give the Player away. At the Brewers’ 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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