Another day, another waiver wire pickup by Theo Epstein - LHP Billy Traber. Looks like a low-risk, potential high-yield move to me. Worse thing happens, he doesn’t recover well from Tommy John (he wasn’t throwing that hard even before surgery), hardly any money lost. And I like anyone who’s one-hit the Yankees, even Mike Maroth.
The whole difficulty Cleveland has in trying to sneak anyone through waivers makes me wonder. At some point the marginal benefit of any additional good players in the farm system may be negligible, in that they’re likely to get claimed off waivers. So while you don’t want to bankrupt a farm system (hello, Yankees), at some point your players are more valuable as trade bait.