There are no golf carts at the San Francisco Golf Club. Golfers play the 18 holes. They keep their phones in their bag or locker. And they try their best to avoid the menacing sand traps. When Matt Moore saw a golf course attendant zooming down the fairway on a golf cart, he knew what that meant.
He had to pause his round — he ended up shooting a 91 thanks to some generous gifts from teammate Chad Wallach — and make a call to learn the identity of his new team.
For four former members of the Angels, this week was part whirlwind, part circus. On Thursday, Moore, his backup Reynaldo López and starter Lucas Giolito were claimed by the Cleveland Guardians. Outfielders Hunter Renfroe and Harrison Bader, the latter from the Yankees, were acquired from the Cincinnati Reds.
The whirlwind began just two days earlier on Tuesday, when Moore finished hitting fly balls during batting practice and returned to the clubhouse where Giolito and Renfroe were waiting for him. They asked if Moore had seen the news that a quarter of the roster had been placed on waivers. At first, Moore waited for a punchline. After they informed him, he assumed they had fallen for a fake social media post.
That sparked a scavenger hunt for information about the waiver process. Could any team claim them? (Yes.) What were the chances that they would be moved? (Pretty high.) Were they all on different teams? (No.) Would they be eligible for the playoffs? (Yes.) When would they know? (Thursday, 1 p.m. ET.)
“I honestly don’t know if anyone has really heard of it,” Renfroe said. “It’s one of those things that isn’t really talked about. As far as waivers go, it’s never really made public. No one really knew or understood what was going on.”
Neither does most of the baseball world. The waiver process has always been an archaic and difficult to navigate mess of rules, most of which changed before the 2019 season. Adding to the confusion, the Angels did something unprecedented under the new system: an attempted salary cut before Sept. 1 so that teams acquiring players could qualify them for the playoffs.
Mike Moustakas, a veteran with 13 seasons of major league experience, gave his Angels teammates some insight into the process, telling him that a team can claim multiple players.
“It was interesting to learn that side of the game,” López said Friday of Cleveland performer Agustín Rivero. “Obviously we didn’t know much about it.”
The group met with Angels manager Phil Nevin and general manager Perry Minasian for a statement.
“Perry kind of explained it to us a little bit better,” Renfroe said. “Nevin had no idea about it either. It was a strange scenario.”
In August, as the Angels made a rapid all-in push to acquire the talent needed to make the playoffs for the first time in nine seasons, Angels owner Arte Moreno exceeded the $233 million luxury tax threshold. But when the team endured an 8-19 season, Moreno was no longer willing to accept the punishment.
Now Giolito, one of the players the Angels signed at the deadline, is on the field next weekend in Anaheim. This time, however, it will be in the Guardians uniform as Cleveland delivers an aptly timed West Coast punch. López said he was looking forward to the four-game series in part so he could gather the rest of his belongings.
Waivers are not supposed to be public, but on Tuesday it was revealed that every Angels player has been placed on waivers. Over the next two days, each of them entered the batter’s box and the pitching rubber knowing that they would likely be moving to a different hitter in a matter of hours. Moore said he tossed and turned at night, wondering what his future held.
“I just tried to go about my day as normal,” Moore said, “I tried to be fun and lighthearted with everyone, just to not seem like things were weird.”
Matt Moore. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA TODAY)
“I had to play two games and I knew you were probably going to be gone, basically,” Renfroe said. “Difficult scenario.”
The Angels flew from Philadelphia to San Francisco on Wednesday evening. They landed around 10 p.m. PT and a group of about 30 people enjoyed a late dinner at Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chao. On Thursday morning, as Moore headed to the links, Renfroe was sitting in the team hotel waiting for his phone to ring. His bags were in the lobby. He just needed a goal.
Moore paused his round and called Nevin, who told him that two of his Angels teammates would be joining him. Moore and López traveled red-eyed to Cleveland, where they landed Friday morning. Giolito was due to arrive on Friday evening. Renfroe flew out of San Francisco at 2:30 p.m. and arrived at his hotel in Cincinnati around 1 a.m. About eight hours later, he was in the Reds’ lineup in the first game of a doubleheader against the Cubs, starting in right field and batting cleanup.
“It’s been a crazy week,” López said.
Once the Angels’ waiver claims became widely known, the Guardians focused on their three pitching targets. They weren’t alone. The Reds also claimed all three of the Angels’ pitchers as well as the outfielders. It would come down to who had priority on waivers, with the teams with the worst records getting the top spot.
Until a league representative called Guardians officials after a frantic refresh of the MLB system, they had no idea whether they would be awarded the rights to one or all three pitchers. They thought the Padres might claim someone – but they didn’t – and since the only cost of acquiring a player in this scenario was cash, they couldn’t rule out a surprise team getting in on the action ahead of them in the waiver order.
Guardians manager Terry Francona arrived at Progressive Field at 12:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.
“They said, ‘We’ll know who, if anyone, we have at 1 p.m.,'” Francona said. “At five later they say: ‘We have them all.'”
This system has been in place since 2019, when the league eliminated the August waivers trade deadline. Previously, teams had the ability to place players on revocable waivers. They could negotiate a trade with the eligible team or keep the player. One executive noted that in August there were hundreds of players receiving waivers every day because it did not require a commitment to deal that player.
However, how this played out – particularly in such a public manner – is unprecedented.
Five weeks ago, the Angels sent two of their top prospects, Giolito and López, to the White Sox. Now the Guardians will keep both players and Moore for almost as long, and the cost to the club was only about $3 million.
“I never in a million years thought it would be three guys,” Francona said.
— Sam Blum of The Athletic contributed to this report
(Top photo of Giolito: Dale Zanine / USA TODAY)