Why offer him a contract? They saw a way to use information obtained to try to get the best possible draft results. They did knowing they had a handshake agreement with Aiken. I'm somewhere in the middle here. I kind of understand the Astros point of view in trying to minimize their risk after the abnormality was discovered. You planned on getting 2 pitchers for $8MM, but now you have doubts about the durability of one of them, so rather than just take a blind chance, you try to hedge your bets by getting him to sign for less and pick up an additional high upside arm as insurance in Marshall. On the other hand, what's the point of making the "official" offer at 40% of the max when you're making an unofficial offer of $5MM at the same time? That's the part I don't really understand. I also think it would be a great idea to allow the teams to pull in maybe a half dozen to ten guys for medical evals pre-draft like they allow a certain number in the NFL draft.