If I'm not mistaken, had the Astros claimed Verlander off waivers then Lunhow and Avila would have had 48 hours to consummate a trade. It could be 72 hours but I think it's 48. If a deal was not reached then Detroit would have had to decide whether to give him to us as a claim, which would have put Lunhow on the hook for all 64 million he was owed, or take him off waivers. Had they pulled him back he could not be traded until off-season. Once he cleared waivers he could be traded to anyone. So, we didn't sell 3 prospects for 16 million. It was gonna take prospects to get him in a trade. But it is entirely possible Lunhow gave them a better prospect than had been agreed upon for them to kick in the money.
If I'm mistaken on this someone feel free to correct me.
Thanks JCIII for a legitimate response. Yours led me to look into it further and from what i can find, you are correct about how it works. Now, it leaves me to wonder the strategy involved in not making a waiver claim for Verlander the first time through.
Now that we "know" some part of the roadblock in the deal being finalized late Thursday night was Justin's desire to see if a deal could be swung with the Cubs or Dodgers, making a claim would have made that a non-possibility and might have helped us get a deal done - or get one sooner. But i don't think we can reasonable speculate that GC had (or should have had) any idea that was an issue until 11pm 8/31.
But still, why not make a claim so you get "exclusive" trade rights. What if the Dodgers had put a claim in - then we'd no longer have the option of a trade. I have two theories:
1) we would never have done the deal without the Tigers taking some of the money. So, as JCIII suggests, rather than my original hypothesis that we might have sold all three for $16M, maybe we sold the difference between the guys offered and a lesser package for $16M which is certainly a better looking deal. However, that still doesn't explain why we wouldn't make a claim and be the only ones who could negotiate unless we were legitimately concerned that they might let him go (and we'd have to pay the extra $16M but not give up our three guys) and we would not have been willing to do this -- so it still feels in a way like we sold those three for $16M.
thus, theory two.....
2) There is an unwritten GM rule that you don't make claims that limit the selling team's ability to negotiate with all 28 other teams, and the enforcement mechanism is that if you do, the selling team just refuses to bargain with you at all for the guy you want. And that is why claims are often made to block competitors - because the claiming team doesn't care if they get the guy or not, just that a rival doesn't.
while researching this post, i came across an article
https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2017/8/3/16084370/mlb-trades-august-deadline-explainer that created a lineup of the most notable players dealt as prospects in August deals and it is more than half former Astros, including: Bagwell, Kent, Nevin, Alou, Bass, O Perez. That article also makes reference that #2 above used to be the case, but implies that it no longer is.
