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I understand perfectly

Posted By Tim

I understand perfectly. I just wanted to make the point and make sure everyone understood what could happen with unlimited rosters.

Under the current set of rules a REBUILDING team might have 10-15 prospects with little value in the current year on their 35 man roster at the end of the drafts. Usually a CONTENDING TEAM will not have quite this many because they use some of their free agent draft picks on guys to help them THIS YEAR.

My point (and I may have exagerrated it some) was that if there was NO LIMIT then for example maybe someone would stock up on the rookies figuring that they can do an unlimited number of odd numbered deals to fill in all their part time needs.

(examples from last year... I needed relief help and I got a guy to agree to trade me Carlos Reyes for Kevin Orie ... then I said... by the way... what is Bobby Bonilla worth to you? his answer "not much" my response "can I get you to throw him in since he isn't worth anything to you anyway") I think I did the same thing later with Tony Phillips but I don't remember the details.

With an unlimited roster and lots of wheeling and dealing you could eventually turn nothing into 5-10 worthwile bench players.

Furthermore with an unlimited roster a team could go after as many fringe prospects as possible and hope that a couple of them turn into something good next year. I.e. George Lombard may or may not be worth anything next year. But if through a series of trades I could turn him into say (Wade Miller, Chad Harville, Ryan Glynn, Steve Lomasney, Steve Cox, Ryan Minor, Russ Branyan, Jacobn Cruz, and 3 other guys) then you are absolutely correct that I would have to cut a bunch of them. But I would have created a situation where I could pick two good prospects out of 10 instead of having 1 that may or may not flop.

Of course my point with this example is that it isn't realistic to be able to protect 45-60 players on a roster in hopes of finding a couple gems. Which was my whole point (or one of them) in the first place.

In reality this is a REALLY STUPID DISCUSSION since the decision on the new 40 man roster limit has already been made. However, since you accused me of not understanding what is going on I thought it would be appropriate to explain what my point was in the first place.

Which is that if you want to make sure things stay REASONABLE some kind of limit was appropriate.