With the regular season in the books, it’s worth assessing how things ultimately shook out from last winter’s Rule 5 draft. Only nine players were taken in this year’s draft. Here’s where things stand:
Remember, players are eligible for the Rule 5 Draft if they aren’t on the 40-man roster four or five years after signing, depending on the age at which they signed. If a team makes a selection, it pays the former team $50K and must keep that player on the Major League roster all season or offer him back to his original team for $25K. (Note that Rule 5 selections can change hands like any other player, with an acquiring team stepping into the shoes of the original selecting club. Click here for more details.)
- Patrick Schuster, LHP (taken first overall by the Astros from the Diamondbacks): Returned to Arizona. But not before a somewhat eventful tour. He was first dealt to the Padres, then placed on waivers and claimed by the Royals before finally being sent back. He never ended up throwing a big league inning, and ultimately struggled to 4.50 ERA in 18 frames at Triple-A once back with the D’backs.
- Adrian Nieto, C (taken third overall by the White Sox from the Nationals): Retained by Chicago. The switch-hitting, 24-year-old backstop hung on all year, posting a .236/.296/.340 line in his first 118 MLB plate appearances. He is now White Sox property.
- Kevin Munson, RHP (taken fourth overall by the Phillies from the Diamondbacks): Returned to Arizona. Munson never made it onto the active roster, and was sent back in mid-March. Though he never saw MLB action this year, he did post a rather dominant campaign at Triple-A: 2.60 ERA, 11.8 K/9, 3.2 BB/9.
- Tommy Kahnle, RHP (taken eighth overall by the Rockies from the Yankees): Retained by Colorado. The 25-year-old was an oft-used bullpen piece for the Rockies, posting a 4.19 ERA in 68 2/3 frames with 8.3 K/9 against 4.1 BB/9. Colorado owns his rights moving forward.
- Brian Moran, LHP (taken ninth overall by the Blue Jays from the Mariners): Still in limbo after season-ending surgery. Moran was dealt by Toronto to the Angels on the day of the draft, and opened the season DL’ed on the active roster. But his left elbow ultimately required Tommy John surgery, meaning that he ended up on the 60-day DL. The Halos do not yet own Moran’s rights permanently: to keep him, the club will need to carry him on the active roster without a DL stay for at least 90 days.
- Seth Rosin, RHP (taken tenth overall by the Mets from the Phillies): Returned to Philadelphia. Dealt immediately after the draft to the Dodgers, Rosin was claimed by the Rangers late in the spring and made three appearances before his roster spot was needed and he was returned. Back at Triple-A with the Phillies, he worked to a 3.86 ERA over 58 1/3 rames.
- Wei-Chung Wang, LHP (taken eleventh overall by the Brewers from the Pirates): Retained by Milwaukee. It took some doing, but a contending Brewers club was able to hold onto Wang for the entirety of the season. Though he did miss 45 games with a DL stint, Wang ultimately made only 14 appearances for the club. The 22-year-old will presumably be stretched out as a starter again as he returns to his development track in the lower minors.
- Marcos Mateo, RHP (taken fifteenth overall by the Diamondbacks from the Cubs): Returned to Chicago. Mateo was the first player to be returned, heading back in mid-March. The 30-year-old threw to a 3.86 ERA in 37 1/3 innings upon his return to Triple-A with his original team.
- Michael Almanzar, 3B (taken sixteenth overall by the Orioles from the Red Sox): Returned to Boston … but ultimately traded back to Baltimore. Shelved with injury for much of the year, Almanzar was returned to the Red Sox in the middle of the summer after a rehab stint. But the O’s obviously wanted him back, and added him as part of the Kelly Johnson deal. Over 233 minor league plate appearances on the year, Almanzar posted a .245/.322/.389 slash.
I wish they would rework the rule five draft so it ends super 2. Or get rid of both.
???
rule 5 draft and super 2 are completely unrelated.
No they aren’t. Rule 5 draft is designed to keep teams from keeping major league ready players out of the major leagues in order to save money. Super 2 is designed to give more money to players who enter the league sooner. Teams are keeping players who are clearly major league ready out of the major leagues for large swathes of time in order to save money from super 2 status. Rule 5 should either be rewritten to address this major issue or both rules should be abandoned.
No, that’s not what Rule 5 is. I can’t speak to what the original intent was, but certainly the players who are chosen in the draft every year are not being “kept out of the major leagues in order to save money.” None of them are. If they were that good they’d be on a team’s 40 man roster. These are moderate prospects with maybe a marginal ML career ahead of them who are blocked by young players ahead of them.
Teams are keeping players who are clearly major league ready out of the major leagues for large swathes of time in order to save money from super 2 status.
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Uh-huh. Clearly ready.
I’m sure players just happen to magically become ready for the major leagues a few days after the super 2 window closes. Just coincidence, huh? Man, aren’t these teams lucky that all of their players suddenly become ready to call up just after super 2 passes? It sure would be unlucky if your players were ready before that window, it might cost you millions of dollars.
Teams do keep players that are major league ready in the minors, but they would be on the 40 man roster and protected from rule 5.
The Rule 5 is for players not on the 40 man, not the 25 man roster. It’s to prevent teams from stockpiling depth. It had little effect on service time manipulation which is more of a recent trend and can be done regardless of the draft. The types of players exposed to the draft are not the types teams manipulate their service time.
Circular logic.
Umm, no.
Of course it is. The intent of rule 5 draft is to protect players from being kept in the minor leagues when they are ready to play in the majors. The current system does, literally, the opposite of this. Your extremely weak argument is this: the current system is the current system. Derp, who cares? The current system is terrible. If circular logic is the best you can come up with to defend the validity of the system, then the system isn’t worth keeping.
No, that’s not his argument.
There are incredibly few players who are on the verge of the major leagues who are not already on their team’s 40 man roster. The Rule 5 draft originated to keep teams from stockpiling talent in the mid-minors for long time with little to no intention of bringing that talent to the Majors.
You are right that the Super-Two system is broken. The Rule 5 draft, however, has nothing to do with that. Whether you choose to acknowledge reality, however, isn’t the problem of the various people who pointed out that you’re wrong.
Yeah, that was not my argument at all and I am not entirely sure how you drew that conclusion.
Lets break down what has been said, shall we?
I said rule 5 should be rewritten to limit teams from keeping players out of super 2.
You said I’m wrong because rule 5 only applies to people who aren’t on the 40 man roster.
Uh, yeah… That is my point. Rule 5 and Super 2 are addressing the same issue from two different directions. Rule five punishes teams for keeping major league ready players in minors too long. Super 2 rewards players for developing quickly. The purpose of the two rules is to incentivize putting major league ready players in majors for both sides. Players get paid more for making majors, teams lose players if they don’t call them up.
Except the system has an obvious flaw. Teams have realized they can keep minor leaguers down for an extra few months to get an extra year of control and save potentially many millions of dollars. This goes contrary to the purposed goal of getting major leaguers to the majors as quickly as possible. The rules should be rebalanced to address this, by punishing teams who keep players down, or you should remove both rules and stop punishing teams for how they treat minor leaguers.
Rule 5 draft is simply there to allow players that some team will be willing to let play in the majors get his chance. Most of the players that teams are actually manipulating service time over are not players that are rule 5 eligible. Even if they were eligible then teams would just stick them on the 40 man roster and still keep them down. Service time is when you are on the 25 man, not when you are on the 40 man.
Players like Polanco wouldn’t have been let go in any scenario imaginable. Teams anyways regularly have several prospects on their 40 man they are protecting from rule 5, that are not getting any service time, and eventually may or may not try avoid super 2 with them.
Almost all players taken in the rule 5 draft are not ready for the major leagues. Almost all get sent back to their original team. Some teams will keep the player up to keep him for the future. Even if they make it through the season they area usually sent back to the minors the following season by the team that drafted them. That says almost always they weren’t major league ready.
Well, to be honest, most players in the Rule 5 draft are fringe MLB. More like AAAA players.
I think it is pretty obvious from what I said is that this should change in order to force teams to put their top talent in the majors as soon as possible.
So back up a step then.
What system would you propose that would get the Gregory Polanco’s of the world to the majors before June 10 that doesn’t actually create a perverse disincentive to move guys through your system quickly? (Note that a player like George Springer is a different topic because he wasn’t on the 40 man roster at the start of this season.) If I’m a GM – or the fan of my local low-revenue team – I sure as heck don’t want anyone outside the organization telling me when a player is ready to be promoted to the majors.
I (think I) remember you threw out an idea of tying some sort of draft pick compensation to a player who’s brought up at the start of the season… how on earth would you actually propose that would work – if that’s still your suggestion?
I question the wisdom of Brewers management, as Milwaukee played, in essence, one player short in their bullpen for much of the first half of the season. Despite Wang being a potentially prospect, his presence on the roster created an overworked bullpen for too much of the season. There is no way that Wang was anywhere close to being a major league pitcher. In the end, the Brewers were a very tired team and missed the play-offs.
Yeah that can happen in Rule 5. I don’t think the Brewers were expecting to be as good as they were in the first half, and probably should have returned Wang when it became apparent they may actually have something going.
Blaming the season on that? I would tend to disagree. He didn’t have much of an effect since there was no real option for that bullpen spot that would have been useful. Yah they could have had a guy like Rob Wooten who is better, but I still won’t be using him. They just used a merry go round of long relievers for blowouts instead of having two on the roster. If one work a lot of innings one day they would demote him and bring someone else up.
The overworked bullpen was because they had 4 reliable guys and that’s it. When Henderson and Thornburg went down there they had to overwork guys like crazy. Roenicke also should get a lot of blame for pitching guys 4-5 days in a row.
The bullpen wasn’t a big problem and when it was it was due to Roenicke grinding guys down. I think Wang could have been more useful if he didn’t go huge stretches without pitching.
Well, Wang missed a couple months while the Brewers were collapsing. I doubt the last guy in the ‘pen would have magically transformed the Brewers into a playoff team. A reliever – even a good one – isn’t that valuable. Teams bullpens are way too big as it is, and the Brewers didn’t use their pen any more or less, statistically, than any other team. The most innings pitched by any of their relievers was 68, by the closer. Most teams had relief pitchers who pitched more innings than that. Wang wasn’t the reason the Brewers lost.
The Brewers, in essence, played their games shorthanded- a roster of 24 MLB players against teams of 25. Starters and relievers, both, were needed to pitch more innings because of the depleted bullpen size. Wang, individually was not at fault, but a misguided and misdirected management team should be held accountable. To keep a lowest level minor league pitcher based solely on his potential in five years, at the expense of having a fully functional MLB roster, may not have been the lone reason for keeping the Brewers out of the play-offs, but it was most definitely a primary one.
Everybody Chung Wang.
Nieto looks like a good player so far, Can hit from both sides of the plate and started to get a few key hits for the Sox as he got more and more time in. Just wish he would have gotten a better look going into September.
Was sad to lose him as a Nats fan…
Leave it to the Phillies to “Munson” themselves out of a young player.
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What do you mean you don’t get my near two decade old reference? I’m hip!
That was a puzzling thing for the Padres to do considering they gave up a player to get rights to Schuster.
It was just Anthony Bass though, who is no longer even in the majors.