On Thursday, at precisely 9am, virtually every front-office executive in baseball, as well as scores of scouts, agents and most writers covering the sport, gathered in an enormous banquet hall at the Gaylord Hotel in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
They came together for the Rule 5 draft, a unique and rapid-fire event on the baseball calendar, where most of the non-uniformed decisionmakers in baseball assemble in one room for about half an hour on the final morning of the winter meetings, pick players most people have never heard of and then sprint headlong to the airport for their journey home.
After more than three dizzying days of trade talks, negotiations, bluffs, rumors, signings and actual trades, the Rule 5 draft is the unofficial closing ceremony of the winter meetings. It’s a bit like the finale of the Olympics, but without the laser shows, extravagant costumes and lavish dance routines.
Photo: AFP
“Aside from making deals, which have their own reward, it’s the best part of the winter meetings,” said Sandy Alderson, the New York Mets’ general manager, who lost two minor-league players in the draft on Thursday. “Everybody is in there and everybody wants to see what’s going to happen.”
There is a smidgen of suspense about who gets taken, but for many in the sport, the event is more like an annual social mixer to enjoy before jostling for a cab in the hotel driveway.
The room is set up with a podium at its front and 30 tables with four or five representatives from each team. Behind that setup is seating for scouts, major-league officials, agents and reporters. However, as the event is so brief, many stand at the perimeter, close to the doors, some with their suitcases at the ready.
In existence since 1903, the Rule 5 draft allows teams to select players from the farm systems of other clubs who are not on those teams’ 40-man rosters. The players must have been in the minor leagues for four or five years, depending on how old they were when they signed, without any major-league service time.
It is a gamble, because the team selecting the player must pay US$100,000 — it was US$50,000 until the recent collective bargaining agreement — to the player’s former organization and then keep the player on its 25-man major league roster for the entire coming season and pay him the minimum major league salary, now US$500,000. If the team does not keep the player on its roster, it must offer him back to his former organization for US$50,000.
Most players chosen in the Rule 5 draft amount to little. A handful become useful major leaguers, and a tiny collection become superstars. Perhaps the most famous was Roberto Clemente, the Hall of Fame outfielder who was plucked out of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ system by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1954.
George Bell, the 1985 American League Most Valuable Player, was a Rule 5 selection, as was Willie Hernandez, the 1984 American League Cy Young winner and MVP, and R.A. Dickey, who won the National League Cy Young Award with the Mets in 2012.
Johan Santana was taken by the Florida Marlins from the Houston Astros’ Class A affiliate in 1999 and was immediately traded to the Minnesota Twins for Jared Camp. Camp never played in the majors, but Santana won two AL Cy Young Awards for the Twins and threw the New York Mets’ only no-hitter.
Peter Greenberg, Santana’s agent, was delighted that his client was selected, because it meant he would get a chance to pitch in the big leagues and get a year of service time.
It was part of a string of five straight years when Greenberg and his brother Ed had players selected at the top of the Rule 5 draft, including the former Mets outfielder Endy Chavez.
On Thursday, three of their players were taken, including Kevin Gadea, whom the Tampa Bay Rays obtained from the Seattle Mariners’ Class A team.
“Sometimes the guys don’t know the rule, and you have to explain it to them,” Peter Greenberg said. “I told Kevin: ‘Johan was taken from Class A, too. Maybe you will be the next Johan.’”
In one case, a pick was traded for a pitching coach, though few knew it at the time. In 2003 the Mets sent their pick to the Oakland Athletics for a player to be named later, as Jim Duquette, then the Mets’ general manager, explained it. However, the real focus of the deal was Rick Peterson, who was allowed to leave the A’s to become the Mets’ pitching coach. Duquette could not even remember the name of the player involved.
“I’m not even sure it was legal, but no one really cared,” Duquette said.
Thursday’s draft lasted only 25 minutes from the first pick to the last, a mere blink of an eye compared with the NFL draft, a made-for-television event that stretches over three days.
Only teams that have space on their 40-man roster can take players in the major-league phase of the Rule 5 draft. Some teams, like the Kansas City Royals and the St Louis Cardinals, unwilling to take the financial risk, simply passed. Only 18 players were picked in the major-league phase on Thursday, which took only 11 minutes.
There were 39 players selected in the Class AAA phase. Those players are assigned to minor-league rosters and the selecting team must pay US$24,000. The entire event was over by 9:35am, at which point most of the general managers did end-of-meeting interviews. Very few questions were about the Rule 5 draft.
The New York Yankees’ system was strip-mined of a staggering seven players — including the former first-round pick Tyler Hensley — and they picked up two in the minor-league phase.
Cashman was peppered with questions about his signing of Aroldis Chapman.
“I like to come and see everyone in one place,” the agent Dan Horwits, who saw two of his players selected in Thursday’s draft, said from the back of the hall. “It’s cool to see the old guard dressed in suits, but half the people aren’t even paying attention. They’re just talking to each other before they get out of Dodge.”
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