waiver wire by convention

but fine, i guess more accurately its free agent pool. a true waiver wire is when a player gets dropped and then cannot be picked up right away. depending on the time he has to spend on the 'wire', he is picked up a day, two days later by the waiver wire order. if you look at the football league, you will see we had a waiver wire order as well. that way if mike drops mark prior its not a free for all. if i have the 5th spot on the waiver wire order but andy has the 1st, he gets first dibs on prior. but once you use your waiver wire spot, you get dropped to the bottom. that means if you blow your load on prior, you wont be able to pick up kerry wood who will certainly get injured within weeks of the season starting. but we dont have a waiver wire, so thats moot. (ok andy, i can't spell. we got it. make sure you teach the middle school kids that you don't need to spell to get into a good college.)

*omar: what do you call a point that is purely academic, or that cannot be settled and isn't worth discussing further? -alm

and pete what i was referring to was an adrian beltre type situation. im not sure if ben dropped him but let me explain. he is drafted in the 3rd round. He flirts with the mendoza line in april and may and ben ends up dropping him because he never should have drafted him in the first place. He sits for about two months then in August decides to stop sucking and starts to hit .350 or whatever. Ben decides to pick him up again just as a flyer. Why should Ben get penalized with a third round pick if he wants to keep him next year when any other team could have picked him up for a low pick just because he drafted him at the start of the season?

why penalize ben in this scenario: because ben was wrong in drafting adrian beltre. frankly, this is why you don't cut people. you bench them, but you don't cut them. you trade them, but don't cut them, unless they're truly worthless, or you think so anyway. now that we have a slightly longer bench, 2 DL slots as well, i don't think you should ever cut your third round pick unless he dies or is so bad (jamie moyer) that you can't even trade him for someone else's disappointment. the moral of the story, anyway, and the answer people seem reluctant to accept is, it would be ben's fault for drafting a guy who sucks early in the draft. why give him a free ride and let him get beltre back cheaper since he was the (hypothetical) butthead who drafted adrian beltre in the third round after adrian beltre's "i need a contract" year.


but who would take on, not only a bad player (moyer/beltre) but also take on his draft spot. i could understand trading beltre for someone like iguchi but only if you didn't have to take on his draft spot. what is the recourse then for drafting a bad player? like when i took pat burrel in the 4th round three years ago, that was a terrible move. but if i could have kept him as a 27th round player i would have but never as a 4th rounder. and nobody would have traded for him as a 4th rounder. but then if i would have dropped him someone else could get him as a 27th rounder. i just don't understand why everyone else gets a benefit that i dont. i might not be making this argument if you lost a 10th round pick instead of the 27th round pick but as such we are in this situation. i also love the irony of pete saying "quite frankly, this is why you don't cut people". i only had 11 moves all year and you had 100+ and i'm trying to help your ... kind ... out.

can we get a more moderate viewpoint here? i think pete and i are the extremes in terms of moves making.

omar: "everyone else gets a benefit that i don't" ans: because they didn't take pat burrel in the 4th round, they took someone better. they are rewarded for their good decision. you, conversely, are penalized for your poor decision.

"trading beltre for someone like iguchi" ans: you would still make the trade, but the person trading for beltre probably would not be planning on exercising his option to keep him. remember, it's not as if beltre explodes if you don't elect to keep him; he just re-enters the pool and you could attempt to draft him again in a more reasonable round. -alm

andy - that doesn't answer the question. it just says im stupid, which i was for drafting burrell. but it doesn't change the fact that he was dropped and thus becomes (by rule) a free agent pickup. im asking how we are going to go about verifying this. if you can get over the fact that some people (my god!) make bad draft picks (see andy martin circa 2005 top 3 picks) we can come to a good answer.