How do you know the cost of trading for allocations is next to nothing.
Since only one small allocation was traded, that would suggest the opposite, we had to trade two prospects to get a sizeable allocation the year before.
We'd be trading prospects AND spending $2M on a 16 year old pitcher, we simply don't know if they asked around, and found the asking price in prospects simply wasn't worth it for a 16 year old.
You also don't know if Ruiz had been wired to the Athletics or if there was open bidding.