[moate]

Let's say I'm a terrible baseball owner, and I'm completely out of available cash because I'm still paying a 1.2 million dollar contract. I literally cannot get a single extra dollar from anywhere.

Having that contract on my books prevents me from calling up 2 rookies this season, because I'm unable to pay their salaries. Yes, I'm technically buying them from "myself" by pulling them from my team's MiLB affiliates, but we're just arguing the semantics of what "buying" means here, not what the going rate of a rookie is ($555,555 USD in 2019)