Ed Wade is doing this Smart

The Astros have apparently placed Brett Myers, Wandy Rodriguez and Clint Barmes on waivers.  Nothing special about that since clubs routinely do it with all their players after the trade deadline to see who might still have interest as the pennant races go down to the wire.

What is interesting though is Astro GM Ed Wade's timing.  He made sure to do it on a Friday so there would be two extra days for clubs to think about it.  Players are on the waiver wire for 48 hours, but weekends don't count.  So clubs have until Tuesday to put in a claim.

What do the Astros want out of this?  They want to either drop payroll entirely by letting a claiming club have one or all of those players.  Or, they want to work out a deal with a claiming club after pulling the player off waivers that might include the Astros paying part but not all of the salary.

Why could that be a good thing?  Well, in reality the Astros would be paying for higher level players from the other club's farm system for Wandy, Myers or Barmes in a trade.  The more the Astros agree to pick up in the veteran player's contract the better the prospects should be from the other club.

That is the direction the club wants to go in rebuilding as quickly as possible.  The Astros got some real solid talent in both the Pence and Bourn trades last month.  They did the same last season when Lance Berkman was dealt to the Yankees and cash was included.  Houston came out with Mark Melancon and Jimmy Paredes. They would like the same in any future waiver deals.

Even if the Astros decided to allow a claiming team to have one or more of the three players directly off waivers with no trade they would still come out ahead.  They would save all the remaining salary which could them be funnelled into the player development system either as more cash for signing next year's June draftees or in other deals with other clubs in the off season.

Player development is an inexact science.  So is signing veteran players to huge dollar long term contracts.  Player development allows for more mistakes at less cost.  Signing veterans to long term high dollar contracts often straps a team with money obligations they do not like in the latter years.

Whether anything comes from the Myers, Rodriguez and Barmes offerings to the other clubs won't be know until next week.  But it was a smart move for both timing and intent.