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Over the next month, deals involving players on 40-man rosters cannot be made unless the players have cleared waivers. A player exposed to waivers can be claimed by any team and -- if there are multiple claims -- the player would be offered to the team with the lesser record.
At that point, a team has 48 hours to either try to work out a trade with the claiming club or remove the player from waivers. A player can only be pulled back from waivers once, but if he clears waivers either the first or a second time through, a team can attempt to trade him to any club.
Teams risk nothing putting players on waivers. Also every once in awhile a team gets lucky and gets to unload a bad contract for nothing. Rios comes to mind. White Sox claimed him and Toronto said ok take him and his fat contract. If you do claim a waiver guy you can get stuck with him. Boston tried a few times dumping Manny Ramirez on waivers for nothing. Just hoping a team would have claimed him and they would not have pulled him back and let him and his contract go for nothing.
One thing to note is that the process of teams placing players on waivers has an element of secrecy to it. I don't believe that players being placed on waivers have to be announced to other teams. This is often why a player can sneak though waivers or "clear" waivers.
Someone please correct me on this if I am incorrect.