The notion of “freely available talent” is something of a Sabermetric piety. Savvy waiver claims and judicious use of the Rule 5 draft are two sources, but it’s mostly by trawling through the minor-league free agents each year that many organizations fill their holes at the highest level.
I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail this week asking if I’m going to weigh in on the possibility of a Pete Rose reinstatement to baseball. This is in the wind because Rose met with Bud Selig to discuss how this might happen, and Selig, lacking both a backbone and any sense of integrity, didn’t say “You’re not getting back in, thanks for swinging by, I’ll have my assistant call you a cab.”