Rule V Draft
From BR Bullpen
The Rule V Draft is held annually during baseball's Winter Meetings. Teams must file a 40-man roster with the league office by November 20. Any player who fits all of the criteria below is eligible for the Rule V Draft:
- Player is not on the 40 man roster
- Player has been in the minor leagues for at least 4 years if he was signed after age 19 (was 3 years before the 2006 CBA).
- Player has been in the minor leagues for at least 5 years if he was signed before age 19 (was 4 years before the 2006 CBA).
The cost of drafting a player is $50,000 (this amount has stayed the same for decades). Any player drafted must stay in the major leagues all season. Before he is sent to the minors, he must be offered back to the club who had his rights for a $25,000 waiver fee. Often, teams will send a player in lieu of the fee if they wish to keep the youngster but send him to the minor leagues.
Minor league teams can also participate in the draft. AAA teams can draft any player eligible from AA for $12,000, and AA teams can draft any players that are eligible from Class A for $4,000. Players chosen in the minor league part of the draft do not need to return to the original teams for any reason.
It is rare that a Rule V draftee turns into a major league All-Star. The best known Rule V player is Roberto Clemente, who was drafted from the Los Angeles Dodgers by the Pittsburgh Pirates, after the 1954 season. Also, 2004 American League Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana (1999) and 2008 All-Star Dan Uggla (2004) and 2010 American League MVP Josh Hamilton (2006) were Rule V draftees.
Over the years, the Toronto Blue Jays have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the draft, selecting club fixtures Willie Upshaw, George Bell, Jim Acker, and Kelly Gruber.
[edit] The "old" First-Year Player Draft
From 1959 to 1964, the major leagues organized a second, parallel, draft akin to the Rule V Draft. The First-Year Player Draft allowed teams to draft any player who had completed one year in professional baseball and was not on a team's 40-man roster. The idea behind the draft was to serve as a lever to push signing bonuses down, since teams would risk losing these high-priced signees after one year. Minor league teams at the AAA level could draft from lower-level leagues, and so forth all the way down the minor league chain. As in the Rule V draft, players drafted by a major league team had to spend the entire next season on the team's 25-man roster. Thus, the first such draftee, P Mike Lee spent the entire 1960 season with the Cleveland Indians, pitching only 9 innings.
Among the players selected under this short-lived draft were Paul Blair, Curt Blefary, Reggie Smith, Bobby Tolan, Rudy May, Dick Bosman and Luke Walker. The draft was discontinued after the amateur draft was introduced in 1965.
[edit] Further Reading
- Cliff Blau: "The Real First-Year Player Draft", in The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 39, Number 1 (Summer 2010), pp. 68-71.
