Because the Washburn issue isn’t bad enough
Chris Tillman tops Baseball America’s Prospect Hot Sheet this week. You might remember Tillman from such trades as Jones-Sherrill-Mickolio-Tillman to the Orioles for Erik Bedard.
Tillman’s fanned nearly ten hitters per nine innings at AA this year while allowing a mere nine homers in 118.2 innings, Sherrill’s saved 31 games, Jones has hit better than (I personally) expected, and Mickolio’s pitched well in relief (again).
Ugh.
From Minnesota, the other side
What’s an indication?
From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
I received indications that the Twins offered Boof Bonser. Makes sense, as he is out of minor-league options, and the Twins would need to clear a spot for Washburn. As I wrote recently, Bonser is only 26, and it makes sense for a team that is way out of the race to let Bonser make 10 starts down the stretch.
Bonser isn’t even eligible for arbitration, so the Mariners could have found a pitcher for their 2009 rotation who will make less than $500,000 next year.
Oh no. I have indications the Mariners insisted on getting one of the Twins’ current starting pitchers. Yeah, like Nick Blackburn or Kevin Slowey. That, friends, is sheer lunacy.
I’m interested to see what the Mariners leak in response to this. Blackburn or Slowey for Washburn and Washburn’s contract would, indeed, be total, howl-at-the-moon insanity.
Funny random thought
After writing the waivers explained post, in which we discuss waivers, no-trade clauses, and whether Washburn’s no trade clause would prevent the M’s from even requesting irrevocable waivers (unless they bought out the clause ahead of time), I thought “I wish Kim Ng was around, she worked in the MLB transactions office for a while and is notorious for knowing this kind of thing inside and out.” There’s always hope.
How waivers work
Getting a waiver
A team must receive a waiver in order to do some things with a player’s contract. Like:
– assign it to a minor league team, if a player meets some conditions
– trade it to another major league team, under some conditions
– give a player his unconditional release (we saw this with Sexson and Vidro, for instance). We’re not going to discuss this one as we walk through this.
To get a waiver, a team notifies MLB. Waivers are batched up by the day they’re received (days run from 2pm-2pm eastern time). A team can only request waivers on seven players in any day.
Making waiver claims
Then other teams can enter waiver claims. They essentially have two business days to make the claim.
So if tomorrow I request a waiver for Carlos Silva and get that in before 2pm Eastern, other teams have until 1pm Eastern on Tuesday to notify the league they’d like to make a waiver claim.
If no one claims the player, the team requesting waivers gets them and can do whatever it was they wanted to do in the first place. They get a nice waiver notice which presumably is emailed to them.
Who gets a claim
One team claims, they get the waiver claim
More than one team claims, the precedence order goes worst record in the same league to best record in same league and then the other league. This is a dumb rule. The way the precedence is determined is also complicated, and not “record at time of claim”.
Then MLB sends a nice note to the requesting team that tells them what claims were made. The rule is “any claims”.
The requesting team now has a couple of options:
Let the claiming team take the contract
If no action is taken, the player’s assigned to the claiming team. The team losing the player gets a token amount of cash.
This seems to be frequently overlooked. If someone puts on a claim on Carlos Silva in the previous example, and when I call them up they tell me they want an extra player, or they’re just blocking a trade, or they made a mistake and meant to claim another player, well, it really sucks to be them, because in a month I’m going to sympathize with them about how hard it is to get sour cream out of the clubhouse carpeting.
Make a deal
Work out a means of compensation, either in prospects who don’t have to go through waivers, cash, or gift certificates to the Body Shop. There’s a time limit on this.
Withdraw the waiver request
This is the only leverage the requesting team has: threatening to keep the guy.
If the team requesting a waiver on a player can’t work out a deal with the claiming team, they can withdraw their request. The player stays on their team, and if they were requesting waivers for purpose of a transaction, they’re stuck unable to make that move.
If they do that, they can still try this trick again, but with an added twist:
Requesting waivers again
If a player’s pulled back, a team can request a waiver on the same player again (this is kind of confusing in the rules, by the way, which says “no you can’t request waivers twice” and then “requesting waivers twice in the same period…”)
In this case, the waivers are irrevocable: the requesting team can’t pull the player back. So if you request again post-August 1st, the second time whoever wins the claim war automatically gets them. They don’t have to make a deal or anything.
That doesn’t mean that if the player clears, they have to release him.
The Worst Run Organization In Baseball
In case you weren’t sure, today was a great reminder that we’re all rooting for the worst run organization in baseball. There’s not another franchise with worse leadership or more incompetence in positions of power. From the CEO on down, these people don’t know baseball. They don’t know how to run a baseball team, build a roster, or win baseball games.
This organization is a massive collection of failures. They pile ridiculous decisions on top of each other, only outdoing their stupidity with an arrogance that refuses to learn from their mistakes. They are the Pets.com of MLB, only they refuse to go out of business.
I’m far too attached to the childhood memories I have to ever root for another team, but if the M’s screw up this offseason and don’t completely overhaul the baseball operations department, hiring somebody who actually understands baseball, I’ll spend the next few years rooting for these people to fail miserably and be embarrassed publicly.
These people don’t deserve success. They deserve to be looking for new jobs.
Fire them all.
SI reports no deals for Wash, Ibanez
Heyman reports the M’s failed to work out a deal and both players will be returning to the team.
If true — The M’s could have just rid themselves of Washburn’s horrible contract for next year. This is absurdly horrible mistake of the team that should disqualify our interim GM and anyone associated with the decision from even being considered for a leadership position in the future.
Dave adds: Seriously, this is an indefensible position. None of the people involved in this decision deserve to work in baseball. Fire them all.
USSM Public Service Announcement
The next… oh, let’s say three… people to comment that free agents won’t sign with Seattle, particularly in discussions about getting rid of dead weight free agents that signed in Seattle, will be shown the door.
Note To Lee
Jarrod Washburn confirmed that he was told today that he’s been claimed on waivers. This gives the M’s some amount of time between now and Friday (depending on when he was claimed) to work out a deal with the claiming team or pull him back off waivers.
Mr. Pelekoudas, if Jarrod Washburn is pulled back off waivers and is still wearing a Mariner uniform this weekend, we’re going to riot. You have just been given a gift of freedom from one of the many lousy contracts and players your predecessor stuck this franchise with, and it’s time to just cut bait. Let him go. If you can convince another GM to give you something for him, great, we’ll throw a parade for you, but if you fail to capitalize on this gift, your tenure as a GM will be viewed as a failure.
The Mariners don’t need Jarrod Washburn and shouldn’t want Jarrod Washburn. Ridding Seattle of him and his contract is addition by subtraction, and not having him on the team anymore is more than enough incentive to make the deal.
Jarrod Washburn better not be a Mariner on Friday night. Don’t screw this up.
Game 120, Mariners at Angels
King Felix v Santana. 7:05.
Here’s how ancient I am: Growing up, I used to like MTV’s 120 Minutes but we didn’t (and couldn’t) get cable in my bit of unincorporated King County, so I used to bug friends in other states to mail me video tapes. If you grew up here with me, listening to the big Puget Sound radio stations, you must understand.
Today marks an unimportant milestone: Riggleman has now managed as many games as McLaren lost before being fired.
McLaren: 25-47, .347
Riggleman: 20-27, .426
Washburn cleared, or did not clear, or was not placed on, waivers
I’ve resisted posting anything because there’s no news, but this keeps coming up, soo….
If Washburn was not put on waivers:
– He should be
If Washburn was put on waivers:
– He cleared (somewhat vague Times report, PI report)
– The White Sox claimed him
– The Yankees claimed him
Though the White Sox rumors seem to have died out quickly, and since New York leaks like a sieve, that seems unlikely as well.
People who know Washburn’s waiver status for sure:
– MLB teams
– MLB
– Washburn and his agent, probably
That said, we should probably figure he’s cleared. Which would mean, interestingly enough, that teams didn’t want to take on the salary entirely or that they wouldn’t be able to make a deal with the M’s during the available window.
Which is pretty crazy, if you think about it, and a disconcerting indication that maybe the M’s hurt themselves in the deadline negotiations more than was immediately apparent.
Update: Rosenthal at Fox Sports is reporting both Ibanez and Washburn were claimed. Which directly contradicts the Times/PI stories. Also claims it wasn’t the Yankees claiming, for… well, the why not doesn’t make sense, but okay.