The biggest event of the MLB offseason has come and gone, with the Winter Meetings officially wrapping up on Wednesday in San Diego as the Orioles made perhaps the last splash by signing former Mets masher
Pete Alonso to a five-year deal. However, before all the baseball people packed their bags and headed home, there was one last order of business: the Rule 5 Draft.
A refresher on the rules: Prospects signed when they were 18 years old or younger who have played five or more years without being added to their team’s active 40-man roster are eligible to be selected, and players who were 19 or older when they became pros have four years of protection before they need to be added to the roster. So basically, international signings and high schoolers are eligible after five years, and college draftees are eligible after four.
If selected in the major-league phase, the team making the pick will have to keep the player on their MLB roster for the entire 2026 season (injured list included). The team will also pay $100,000 as compensation for the pick. If, at any time, this team wants to option said player, they have to place the player on waivers, and if unclaimed, offer the player back to their old team for $50,000. As such, most players who don’t make it the full season are returned.
Recent examples for the Yankees include losing Mitch Spence to the Athletics, and losing, but then regaining, Matt Sauer from the Kansas City Royals. In an interesting example, the Yankees lost Carson Coleman to the Texas Rangers in 2023, but the right-handed reliever missed two consecutive seasons with elbow troubles and, due to injury rules, the Rangers still had to keep him on the major league roster until he was healthy, which caused him to be returned prior to 2025.
The Yankees lose more players than any other team in this draft, but haven’t picked one for themselves since Brad Meyers in 2011. It’s less common for win-now teams to have the bandwidth to roster a Rule 5 guy for an entire season. New York has lost 30 players since 2007, and have only escaped unscathed once since 2014. Today, however, we got an absolute stunner.
Not only did the Yankees not lose a player for the second straight season in the major-league phase, they surprised just about everyone in making a selection of their own: right-handed pitcher Cade Winquest from the St. Louis Cardinals.
Winquest was an eighth round pick in the 2022 MLB Draft by the Cardinals out of the University of Texas. After a slow start to his professional career and missing most of 2024 with injury, he rebounded to pitch to a 3.99 ERA with 110 strikeouts in 106 innings across High-A and Double-A in 2025. Winquest boasts a high-90s fastball and uses up to five pitches, with high regards for his curveball and changeup.
This was a fairly stunning pick, and one that’ll be an interesting narrative in spring training. The Yankees have abandoned major spending with their bullpen, and have decided to go a number of different routes with it over the years. This time, they’ll experiment with a Double-A project arm and see if he can be molded into a big-league reliever. If not, they’ll send him back. The last Yankee Rule 5 pick to stay an entire season? Billy Parker in 1973, but that was back when you didn’t have to keep players in the big leagues all season.
Here’s a little more on Winquest from assistant general manager Michael Fishman:
The minor-league phase of the Rule 5 Draft then began. In this phase, teams usually exchange a bunch of minor leaguers with little-to-no prospect status. The rules state that, to protect a player, you must put them on your Triple-A roster (they can be re-assigned after), but these “rosters” feel more internal and there might be a gentleman’s agreement to, say, not take Low-A and Rookie ball studs. There’s no restrictions here, really, you just pay $24,000.
The Yankees drafted two players, but lost three players.
The first of the two players they drafted was Hansel Rincon, a DSL pitcher for the Brewers. Rincon slowly progressed in the Diamondbacks system from 2021-23, but after a solid season in the Arizona Complex League, he was cut in March 2024. There’s no other information on the 23-year-old righty from there, aside from him latching on with the Brewers in November.
The second player drafted was catcher Abrahan Gutierrez, a 26-year-old backstop who figures to fill the gaping holes left by the whirlwind of young backstops the Yankees have traded/let go over the past few months. He slashed .235/.316/275 in 32 games in Low-A and Triple-A for the Pirates last year, so this feels like a move to get a body in the organization to supplement the depth.
The three players poached started with righty pitcher Adam Stone, who missed the entire 2024 and 2025 seasons due to injury. An undrafted free agent in 2022 from Harvard, his only minor league track record was 20 innings with Low-A Tampa in 2023, where he posted a 7.20 ERA. The Cubs took a flyer on him, presumably seeing something interesting during his five-inning stint in the Arizona Fall League in the fall.
The second player off the board was another righty, Sean Hermann, poached by the Mariners. Hermann was a 14th-round pick in 2021 out of high school, so he’s still relatively young at 22. He missed 2024 with injury and transitioned from a starter to a reliever once he returned, posting a 3.17 ERA with Tampa in nearly 60 innings, but a look under the hood shows concerning metrics — namely, his 33 walks to just 45 strikeouts in that sample.
The final player was the Mets taking lefty Matt Turner. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because he has never pitched a game in the organization. The southpaw was presumably signed at some point this offseason (he doesn’t show up on any transaction lists) after an ERA just under six across Double-A and Triple-A with the Rockies.
