The Rule 5 Draft is upon us and with comes a lot of questions about who the Braves will protect or not protect as well as “what the hell is the Rule 5 draft?”. Fortunately, we are here to run down the basics. For those of you out there that want to know who the Braves could pick in the Rule 5, Aaron ran down some interesting options earlier this morning.
The Rule 5 draft is essentially a way to prevent teams from stashing away players in the minor leagues forever. The short version is that after a player is drafted, once that player is in the minor leagues for 4-5 years (four years if they were were 19 or older when they were drafted, five if younger), they are considered Rule 5 draft eligible IF they are not on their current organization’s 40 man roster.