Major League Baseball’s Rule 5 Draft isn’t until December 10th, but today (Tuesday, November 18th) marks the deadline for teams to protect prospects who would otherwise be draft-eligible by adding them
to their 40-man rosters.
Teams have until 6 PM ET this evening to make additions, and the Cincinnati Reds have several key pieces from down on the farm I suspect they’ll add. That is, of course, unless those players become part of a larger trade/transaction before the deadline, as all 30 MLB clubs are looking to finagle players onto crowded rosters and may be more willing than ever to make moves before time’s up.
For the record, the Rule 5 Draft exists to prevent teams from simply hoarding prospects in the minors. Players who have been pros for long enough – five or six years, depending upon their age when they were first signed – deserve the right to advance, and this prevents clubs from simply cornering the market on certain talented prospects to prevent other clubs from giving them a path to big league playing time.
If you aren’t willing to (or simply cannot) give them promotions when they’ve played well enough to deserve them, well, the players association thinks those players should get a chance to play somewhere else.
The Reds jumped the deadline a bit last week when they added righty Jose Franco to their roster, the #25 ranked prospect in the system per MLB Pipeline. According to them, each of Edwin Arroyo (#8), Hector Rodriguez (#9), Carlos Jorge (#22), and Leo Balcazar (#23) are the rest of the team’s prospects within the Top 30 who’d be Rule 5 eligible if not added to the roster today. I think each of Arroyo, Rodriguez, and Balcazar are locks at the moment, and Jorge’s upside likely means he’ll get an add today as well.
Keep in mind that while a prospect’s upside is obviously part of the decision to add them to the 40-man, teams also get cagey with their decisions. That’s because any player drafted in the Rule 5 must remain on the drafting team’s active roster throughout the next season or else be offered back to their previous organization – sometimes, teams will leave players even they themselves are high on off of the 40-man simply due to their belief that those players are still too far away from being big-league ready for someone to take them. For instance, Jorge, for all his defensive prowess and emerging power at just 21, still hasn’t played above High-A Dayton, so the odds of a team selecting him and putting him right into the majors seems slim – and an extra 40-man roster spot might well be valuable enough for the Reds right now to roll that dice.
We’ll find out if the Reds make these additions later this afternoon, as well as whether they make any more surprise additions beyond them.
