2011 Rule 5 Draft

The MLB’s rule 5 draft went down today. Basically the rule 5 draft is when anyone not on the 40 man roster of a team by Novermeber 18^th I believe is the date, is eligible to get selected, as long as they’ve been in the minor leagues for 4 or 5 seasons (The number depends on the age of the player). There have been some big names that came out of this draft in the past such as Johan Santana, Josh Hamilton, Jose Bautista, Dan Uggla, Jayson Werth and Shane Victorino. To further complicate things any player selected must stay on the MLB roster for the entire season or they must be offered back to the team in which they came from. Other points of note, a team can trade a player they select, and a team must have less than 40 men on their roster to select a player, but let’s get on to this year’s draft. Not a ton of big names but I’ll throw out one that I think was a really good selection. Cesar Cabral formerly of the Red Sox was selected by the Royals and then traded to the Yankees. Cabral is a hard throwing lefty who put together a good season in A/AA ball last season. I think he has a good chance of staying with the Yankees and being a good player out of their bullpen. He’s just 22 years of age and already has 5 years of minor league experience so I think he could be ready to pitch in the big leagues out of the pen this year. Now for the minor league portion of the draft, I will spare you the details to this part, but one guy to keep an eye on is Andy Loomis. I like this pickup by the Baltimore Orioles as they have a pretty barren farm system for the most part and Loomis is a young up and comer who will probably give you help out of the bullpen soon. He had a great season in high A in 2011, similar to Cabral mentioned earlier. Other players I like that were drafted include Robert Fish, Ryan Flaherty, Marwin Gonzalez, and Ricky Alvarez to name a few. One guy I would have drafted that went unselected, Daniel Nava OF for the Red Sox AAA team. Clearly proved in an injury decimated season for the Sox in 2010 that he can play (he had a .351 OBP which in my books is pretty good). Then again as a Sox fan I’m glad he didn’t get selected. We’ll see who emerges as steals of this year’s rule 5 draft. The rule 5 draft, you gotta find those diamonds in the rough.