Once a potentially impactful draft that nobody paid attention to, the Rule 5 draft is now an inconsequential draft that most diehard baseball fans pay too much attention to. Present company included. I kid, sort of. But it was once a draft that gave the Pittsburgh Pirates Roberto Clemente, the Chicago Cubs Hack Wilson, and the Minnesota Twins Johan Santana. These days, it’s mostly a reliever factory. The best representative of which is Garrett Whitlock, selected in the 2020 Rule 5 by none other than Chaim Bloom.
In the search for the next Whitlock, Bloom has selected a player who has encountered a vastly different journey than Whitlock did.