Kenny Wilson Claimed by Blue Jays

[Seth Stohs]

The Twins DFAd Kenny Wilson recently when they added Chris Parmelee to the 40 man roster and called him up.

 

Today it was announced that Wilson had been claimed by the Toronto Blue Jays... or should that be reclaimed.

 

It will be interesting to see if the Blue Jays would DFA Darin Mastroianni to make room for Wilson.

[jorgenswest]

This is really unfair to the players and their families. Major League Baseball and the players association need to fix this so that players aren't losing so much time in DFA limbo and unnecessarily moving their families so many times.

 

Easy fix - the claiming team must keep them on the 40 or 25 for the remainder of the season (or at least 100 days). Too many teams are claiming with full knowledge that they will be designating in short time. The player is the loser.

[Thrylos]

This is really unfair to the players and their families. Major League Baseball and the players association need to fix this so that players aren't losing so much time in DFA limbo and unnecessarily moving their families so many times.

 

Easy fix - the claiming team must keep them on the 40 or 25 for the remainder of the season (or at least 100 days). Too many teams are claiming with full knowledge that they will be designating in short time. The player is the loser.

 

The players do not move their families. Usually they move themselves. Same thing about MiLB players getting promoted. There are players who play in 3 sometimes 4 different levels in a season. You cannot tie a club's hands but having rules like that. What if someone is awful? Should the teams keep him for some period instead of releasing him?

 

Those are the rules. If someone wants more family time and a stable living situation, there are other jobs...

[Joe A. Preusser]

The players do not move their families. Usually they move themselves. Same thing about MiLB players getting promoted. There are players who play in 3 sometimes 4 different levels in a season. You cannot tie a club's hands but having rules like that. What if someone is awful? Should the teams keep him for some period instead of releasing him?

 

Those are the rules. If someone wants more family time and a stable living situation, there are other jobs...

 

Agreed. It's a traveling job to begin with. Many companies require relocation for promotion.

[ashbury]

The business about families is a red herring IMO, but I agree the rules need to be adjusted. Teams doing tit-for-tat claims, which seems to have come up also with the Orioles a while back, just look like GM's acting like tools to address real or imagined slights in the past.

 

I agree with Thrylos that overly strict rules will tie teams' hands needlessly. One simple (?) change is that if you claim a guy on waivers you can't turn around and waive him yourself for say 12 months; if you do want to remove the player from the 40-man, you lose him and he reverts to the original team, at the same stage of the waiver process as before the claim (so that one team can't screw others trying to claim players).

[Brock Beauchamp]

And the Jays continue their non-stop jackassery. MLB needs to change the rules so that a player cannot be reclaimed by a team that released him earlier that season.

[Paul Pleiss]

I don't think MLB needs to change the waiver system at all. Players get moved around, and sometimes I'm sure they feel like puzzle pieces or pawns, but that's part of what they signed up for. If a team waives a guy and looses him, why not try to get him back later in the season if you want him?

 

The rules work. There are some players who probably feel like they're getting f'd over, but that's the game.

[Seth Stohs]

I agree... no need to change the rules... my guess is the Blue Jays will now DFA Wilson and he will clear and they'll get to keep him... which is what they wanted all along.

 

It obviously stunk for guys like Alex Burnett or Liam Hendriks and many others, but they're easy to understand rules.

[cmathewson]

I like the idea of the Jays DFAing Mastro to make room for Wilson. What does it say to Blue Jays minor leaguers for their team to have such disregard to loyalty?

[Thrylos]

The only reason the Jays added Wilson to their 40-man is to protect him from the Rule 5 draft. He is at least a couple years away from the majors, if he ever hits enough to make it, so a 40-man spot will be wasted on him.

[Otto von Ballpark]

It will be interesting to see if the Blue Jays would DFA Darin Mastroianni to make room for Wilson.

 

The Jays DFA'd Chris Getz before claiming Wilson, so no, Mastroianni isn't going anywhere right now.

[nicksaviking]

The business about families is a red herring IMO, but I agree the rules need to be adjusted. Teams doing tit-for-tat claims, which seems to have come up also with the Orioles a while back, just look like GM's acting like tools to address real or imagined slights in the past.

 

I agree with Thrylos that overly strict rules will tie teams' hands needlessly. One simple (?) change is that if you claim a guy on waivers you can't turn around and waive him yourself for say 12 months; if you do want to remove the player from the 40-man, you lose him and he reverts to the original team, at the same stage of the waiver process as before the claim (so that one team can't screw others trying to claim players).

 

How about if he's removed from the 40-man x amount of months after being claimed he becomes a free agent?

[Otto von Ballpark]

This is really unfair to the players and their families. Major League Baseball and the players association need to fix this so that players aren't losing so much time in DFA limbo and unnecessarily moving their families so many times.

 

Easy fix - the claiming team must keep them on the 40 or 25 for the remainder of the season (or at least 100 days). Too many teams are claiming with full knowledge that they will be designating in short time. The player is the loser.

 

We have been over this before, but in most respects the current system is good for the players. Kenny Wilson, for example, has stayed on a 40-man roster throughout the process, earning a slightly higher salary and staying closer to the big leagues. Your solution would simply leave more players unclaimed and removed from 40-man rosters, adding another barrier to a return to the big leagues (and reducing their minor league salary too).

 

I could see shortening the 10 day DFA window, and adding or increasing moving expenses etc. But otherwise changing the rules could easily hurt the players in question.

[ashbury]

How about if he's removed from the 40-man x amount of months after being claimed he becomes a free agent?

 

Team A wants to remove a player from their 40-man but would like to keep him in their minors. They waive/DFA him.

 

Team B makes a claim and gets him. Some weeks/months later, they want to remove him from their 40-man but would like to keep him in their minors.

 

My view is that Team A ought to have first claim on keeping him in the minors and off their 40-man; when the dust settles, why should Team B get their wishes granted for a player that nobody evidently has actual room on their 40-man for?

 

And if the player is made a free agent, then Team B has caused Team A some harm that would not have occurred if Team B had just minded their own business.

 

Undoing the claim as though it had never happened and reverting to that original moment, subject to other teams possibly having put in a claim too, seems fairest, if the player has not been kept for some fixed threshold of time (which I could be persuaded should be shorter or longer).

 

I view claims like Team B here to be somewhere on the spectrum of spurious/nuisance/dishonest, and this takes away the incentive of getting free roster filler for their minors. And I find it especially regrettable that "my" team has gotten itself into this pattern of retaliatory bottom-feeding.

[Kirby_waved_at_me]

It is kind of silly for the Twins (or any team) to claim a guy for their 40-man that they don't think could crack their 25-man roster.

Kenny Wilson in particular since the Twins had -1 healthy outfielders and DFA'd Wilson so they could add Parmelee to the 40 man. They didn't want to play Wilson to fill the injury need (and based on Wilson's AA stats, that is reasonable).

I get the reasoning behind picking Wilson up (I even jokingly suggested that they do it to spite the Blue Jays), the Twins need OF depth.

It still seems odd that they would have claimed specifically him in the first place given that they needed a player to fill a hole created by injury on the 25 man roster. He's years away from the Majors, so putting a claim on him was just filling a space on the 40 man that would need to be cleared when they had the next injury.

[nicksaviking]

Team A wants to remove a player from their 40-man but would like to keep him in their minors. They waive/DFA him.

 

Team B makes a claim and gets him. Some weeks/months later, they want to remove him from their 40-man but would like to keep him in their minors.

 

My view is that Team A ought to have first claim on keeping him in the minors and off their 40-man; when the dust settles, why should Team B get their wishes granted for a player that nobody evidently has actual room on their 40-man for?

 

And if the player is made a free agent, then Team B has caused Team A some harm that would not have occurred if Team B had just minded their own business.

 

Undoing the claim as though it had never happened and reverting to that original moment, subject to other teams possibly having put in a claim too, seems fairest, if the player has not been kept for some fixed threshold of time (which I could be persuaded should be shorter or longer).

 

I view claims like Team B here to be somewhere on the spectrum of spurious/nuisance/dishonest, and this takes away the incentive of getting free roster filler for their minors. And I find it especially regrettable that "my" team has gotten itself into this pattern of retaliatory bottom-feeding.

 

I guess I view granting them free agent status as keeping in spirit with the parameters of the 40-man, Rule V draft and option rules, wherein teams are discouraged from hoarding players in the minors. Sucks for the team, but good for the player. The team could have kept the player had they not removed him from the 40-man, it's still their perogative to do so.

 

After getting yanked around by two teams, the player is given the opportunity to go where he best has a chance of making a 25-man, or at least making a 40-man. I think getting the best 750 baseball players at the MLB level would be best for baseball anyway.