Thursday is the final day of the 2014 Winter Meetings. The big event of the final day each year is the Rule 5 draft. The draft is attended by all 30 Major League organizations. The player pool is made up entirely of players not protected on a team's 40-man roster. As a result, the Rule 5 Draft has often been equated to finding diamonds in the rough. Teams' scouting departments will scour the list of eligible players, looking for potential where others perhaps didn't see any.
The MLB Rule 5 draft is just the first of three Rule 5 drafts. There is a AAA portion of the Rule 5 draft. Each organization can put up to 39 players on their AAA roster. There is a AA portion of the draft, though very few players are selected in it.
There are several differences between these drafts. To make an MLB selection, a team must pay $50,000. That player needs to be on the drafting team’s 25-man roster all season or be offered back to the original team for $25,000. The other option is that the teams can work out a trade.
To select a player in the AAA portion, the cost to the team is $12,000. For a player selected in the AA portion, the cost is $5,000. In both cases, the player remains with the new organization.
Changes to the Rule 5 Draft in 2006, giving teams an additional season to evaluate players before having to make roster decisions, have made it a little more difficult to find talent. Now, players first signed at age 18 must be added to 40-man rosters within five seasons or they become eligible to be drafted by other organizations through the Rule 5 process. Players signed at 19 years or older have to be protected within four seasons.
In other words, an international player or high school draftee signed in 2010, assuming he was 18 or younger as of June 5 of that year, must be protected. A college player taken in the 2011 First-Year Player Draft is in the same boat.
A player is usually left unprotected because a team either believes he's so far away from being a big league contributor that he won't stick, or it is willing to part ways with that player. Whatever the reason, there are some intriguing names on that massive list of eligibles.
The Rule 5 Draft order and the status of each team's 40-man roster as of Wednesday night. Teams can only select a player if it has space on its 40-man roster.
1. Arizona Diamondbacks, 39
2. Colorado Rockies, 39
3. Texas Rangers, 38
4. Houston Astros, 38
5. Minnesota Twins, 39 (Lookouts parent club)
6. Boston Red Sox, 39
7. Chicago White Sox, 38
8. Chicago Cubs, 38
9. Philadelphia Phillies, 38
10. Cincinnati Reds, 38
11. Miami Marlins, 39
12. San Diego Padres, 39
13. Tampa Bay Rays, 40
14. New York Mets, 39
15. Atlanta Braves, 38
16. Milwaukee Brewers, 39
17. Toronto Blue Jays, 37
18. New York Yankees, 37
19. Cleveland Indians, 40
20. Seattle Mariners, 39
21. San Francisco Giants, 40
22. Pittsburgh Pirates, 39
23. Oakland Athletics, 40
24. Kansas City Royals, 39
25. Detroit Tigers, 40
26. St. Louis Cardinals, 37
27. Los Angeles Dodgers, 40
28. Baltimore Orioles, 37
29. Washington Nationals, 40
30. Los Angeles Angels, 39
---- Source: a portion from MLB.com