2024 Rule 5 Draft - Part 3 - One of The Most Stupid Rules In Baseball And What To Expect Leading Up To The Nov. 19th Roster Freeze

ONE OF THE MOST STUPID RULES IN BASEBALL

 OK, you may ask why I would start a Rule 5 post with something about stupid rules.  

Well, in a nutshell, here it is. The 40 man rosters must be frozen in anticipation of the Rule 5 draft on November 19th at 6 pm ET.  The deadline for tendering players a 2025 contract (non-tender deadline) is November 22nd at 8 pm ET.  After November 19th you can no longer add players from your own organization to your 40 man until after the Rule 5.  Players can only be added from outside your organization and any players who have to be dropped from your roster have to be DFA'd.

When you set your roster for the Rule 5 draft shouldn't you have ALL the information necessary to do that?  I mean, you add a prospect and then a good player is non-tendered.  If your roster is full you could, conceivably, have to DFA a prospect you just added to protect him from the Rule 5, JUST to have room for the non-tender free agent.  

Since it is tougher to lose a player for good in the Rule 5 draft (has to stay on the drafting team's active roster for 90 days) compared to a DFA (waiver claims are forever, with no conditions for getting the player back), teams tend to be conservative in their roster freeze decisions to give them flexibility to sign free agents and minimize, to some extent, the risk of losing a prospect for good for little or no return.  This can lead to them leaving quality prospects unprotected, exposing them to the Rule 5.   

If you just pushed the non-tender date back to November 17th and moved the roster freeze date back to November 20th, teams would have all the information possible to make the best roster freeze decisions and that, in my opinion, would lead teams to protect more players from the Rule 5 as they already know what they are looking for in free agency and how many spots to save to fill those holes in their 2025 roster..

Seems elementary to me.

WHAT TO EXPECT BETWEEN NOW AND NOVEMBER 19TH FROM THE GUARDIANS

The Guardians roster stands at 39 right now, meaning, in theory, they can only add one prospect to their roster to protect him from the Rule 5.   Since they have many more prospects who are truly in need of protecting, here is what you can expect

• Unless there is a trade where we trade away mulitple players from our current roster, nothing much will happen before November 19th.
• Since the Guardians are likely to protect Doug Nikhazy, Ryan Webb and Franco Aleman, expect at least 2 players to be traded or DFA'd by November 19th in order to keep the roster at 40 or less
• I think Aaron Davenport and maybe one relief prospect (Misiaszek, Enright, Kent or Mikolajchak) will also be added to the roster (like Cade Smith was last year and Tim Herrin the year before) as those guys will be considered by the Guardians to be both high risk of being drafted in the Rule 5 and high risk of being able to stick with the drafting team next year.
• Expect at least 1-2 surprise moves (e.g., DFAing Triston McKenzie) will be made to free up roster space for these additional prospects.
• Expect that ZERO position prospects will be added to the 40 man.  Simply, there is no room on the roster as the 2021 college pitcher-heavy draft has produced way too many intriguing pitching prospects, some of whom will have to be left unprotected, eligibile for this year's Rule 5 and ZERO compelling position player prospects who are Rule 5 eligible.
• There is an outside chance of a multi-prospect trade to clear roster space before the Rule 5 (see my proposal for a Robert-Benitendi-Crochet trade with the White Sox).  Any trade of this type made after the roster freeze will just be ill-timed so the pressure of the Rule 5 might prompt the Guardians to fill a ML hole with several Rule 5-eligible prospects either currently on or needing to be added to the roster by November 19th.
• There is an even smaller chance that the Guardians will do a reverse Tobias Myer for Junior Caminero trade and trade a Rule 5 eligible prospect they can't protect to a team for a guy who is not yet Rule 5 eligible.  This, essentially, would be a Will Benson to Cincinnati trade where we got Justin Boyd and Andrew Hajjar back.  Given that trade's outcome, however, I doubt that we will see either a Tobias Myers or Will Benson-like trade.

OK, so that's it for right now.  More on the Rule 5 if other scenarios pop up between now and November 19th.