I am posting here merely for future reference. I am not suggesting that we change anything for the current year, because it is confusing enough.
By Jim Bowden
The July 31 trade deadline has come and gone, but teams can still make trades. Of course, August trades are a little more complicated because they involve the waiver process. Here's an quick explanation of what teams need to go through in order to trade a player in August, as well as a breakdown of how I would handle the August waiver period as a GM.
Throughout August, trade assignment waivers must be sought and obtained in order for a team make a swap. A trade assignment waiver request is revocable, which means that if your player is claimed by another team, you have the right to pull him back.
Waiver schedule
The table below shows the schedule for when waivers must be requested, as well as the deadline by which the corresponding claims need to be made.
Waivers requested by 2 p.m. ET on: Waiver Claim must be in by 1 p.m. ET on:
Monday Wednesday
Tuesday Thursday
Wednesday Friday
Thursday Monday
Friday Tuesday
A club desiring a waiver notifies the commissioner’s office by 2 p.m. ET on any day from Monday through Friday. Once a waiver request is registered, it cannot be canceled. The period in which another club may claim a player on whom waivers have been sought can be seen in the table to the right.
Clubs are allowed to place no more than seven players on waivers per day. If a waiver claim is made, and the player is not pulled back, the contract is assigned to the claiming club (in the same league as the requesting club) with the lowest winning percentage. If all claims are from teams in the other league, the assignment will be simply to the claiming club with the lowest winning percentage. These percentages are based on the results of play through the date prior to the expiration of the claiming period.
If the player clears waivers, the club is then free to trade the player without restriction for the remainder of the waiver period. If a player is claimed, the club has 72 hours to decide whether it wants to let the claiming team have the player, pull him back, or negotiate a trade for his services, but only with the team that claimed him.
General managers have different strategies for how they handle August deals. Several teams will immediately put seven players on the list every day until all of their players are either claimed or cleared. Some GMs put through only the players they want to trade and others do a variation of the two extremes.
During my 15 years as a GM, I would run all my players through waivers at various times throughout August. For the players I thought I might actually trade -- and had a chance of getting claimed -- I would usually wait until later in August, when teams had a better chance of knowing where they were in the standings. If there was a particular team I thought I matched up with, I always watched the standings in case a team I thought might block my trade passed the team I wanted to make a trade with.
If you have a particular team you want to make a deal with, you let them know when you are going to put a player through waivers and they put in a claim, hoping the player gets to them. If he doesn’t, you simply can’t make the trade with that team. That’s why you want to take advantage of making deals by the July 31 deadline.
Players with salaries beyond their value normally get through waivers during the first week of August. Claiming clubs have to be careful and be prepared to absorb the player and his salary if they put in a waiver claim. A famous example came in 1998, when the San Diego Padres claimed closer Randy Myers from the Toronto Blue Jays in order to prevent the Atlanta Braves, the only team in the NL with a better record than them, from getting him. The Jays had given Myers a three-year deal the previous winter, so the Padres assumed that Toronto would simply pull him back. However, Myers was having a bad year and Toronto decided to let the Padres have him. They were stuck with the rest of his contract, which had roughly $14 million left on it. Myers was a nonfactor for San Diego and never pitched again in the big leagues because of shoulder woes.
As Buster Olney pointed out today, plenty of big-name players, including Carlos Quentin and Wandy Rodriguez, could be moved this August. If not them, there will be plenty of deals this month. There are 17 teams that still have a chance at a playoff berth, and trade season is far from over.
