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A closer look at the Blue Jays upcoming Rule 5 Draft-related decisions

The Toronto Blue Jays are currently rostering 38 players on their 40-man roster, leaving only two slots at present to add a prospect or a free agent.

By Charles Kime |
Oct 22, 2022; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Seattle Mariners pitcher Adam Macko plays for the Peoria
Oct 22, 2022; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Seattle Mariners pitcher Adam Macko plays for the Peoria / Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
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As baseball’s offseason gathers steam, it's time for some roster housecleaning. Teams must set their 40-man rosters by Tuesday, Nov. 14 by 6 p.m. ET ahead of the annual Rule 5 Draft. As per MLB Pipeline, “Eligible players who are not added to their respective organization's roster by then can be selected by another organization in the Rule 5 Draft”, which is on Dec. 6 in Nashville.

The deadline can lead to lots of player movement, as teams leave players they project as borderline unprotected, and also might “non-tender” rostered players, i.e. decline to offer a contract for next season to those not eligible for free agency to clear a 40-man spot for a younger prospect.

The Rule 5 Draft allows teams to select unprotected players not on 40-man rosters who have played in either parts of five professional seasons (if they signed professionally at 18 or younger) or four professional seasons (if they signed at 19 or older). For 2023, that means an international amateur or high school draft pick signed in 2019, who’s played in parts of every season since then has to be protected. A college player taken in the 2020 amateur draft would be in the same position.

Essentially, it’s an opportunity to give a player who’s blocked in another organization a chance to prove themselves in the majors. While teams aren’t required to make a selection, if they do, they pay $100,000 to the club they selected the player from, and must roster him on their 26-man roster (or injured list) for the full season or otherwise place him on outright waivers. If the player clears waivers, he must be offered back to his original team for $50,000; and can be outrighted to the minors if his original team doesn’t take him back.

Blue Jays implications

For the Toronto Blue Jays, current top 30 prospects who would need to be added to the 40-man roster to be protected include: Dahian Santos (No. 11), Alex De Jesus, (No. 19), Adam Macko (No. 22), Adrian Pinto, (No. 25), Gabriel Martinez (No. 26) and Dasan Brown (No. 29).

The full list of currrently Rule 5 eligible players in the Jays farm system is here, listed as “R5” under the “R5 status” column.

Other potential names to consider would be some of the players sent to the Arizona Fall League, including CJ Van Eyk and Will Robertson. Lazaro Estrada, 24, who pitched for the A-level Dunedin Blue Jays this year and had 103 strikeouts and a 2.83 ERA over 76.1 innings, with a 1.061 WHIP and a 3.96 K/BB ratio, is another possible candidate.

The Blue Jays also have some very young players who are Rule 5 eligible, including Santos, who pitched at High-A Vancouver this year; as well as infielders De Jesus (21-years old), Pinto (21), Estiven Machado (21), Rikelbin De Castro (20) and Marcos De La Rosa (21). While they all have potential, they’re all still very young. Making the jump to MLB might prove difficult, which means the risk of them being drafted this December is probably relatively low.

Importantly, the Blue Jays are currently rostering 38 players on their 40-man roster, leaving only two slots at present to add a prospect or a free agent. They could free up more roster spots by non-tendering someone like Adam Cimber, by trading players, or by designating players currently on the 40-man for assignment and passing them through waivers, like Wes Parsons and Nathan Lukes.

Last year, the Jays added prospects Yosver Zulueta, Orelvis Martinez, Addison Barger and Spencer Horwitz to the 40-man roster to protect them ahead of the Rule 5 Draft.

While a rebuilding team might take a flyer on pitching prospects like Santos or Estrada, with only two 40-man roster spots currently available, it’s most likely that the Jays will protect Slovakian-born and Alberta-raised lefty Adam Macko this year.

He was acquired from Seattle along with Erik Swanson in the Teoscar Hernández trade last November, and had a respectable season with High-A Vancouver, posting a 4.81 ERA over 20 starts and 86.0 innings, with 106 strikeouts against 40 walks. Scouting reports on Macko note that he has a “low-to-mid-90s [fastball], and his strikeout upside is significant thanks to a strong [55-grade] curveball and fast-improving slider.”

He was also a key part of Vancouver’s 5th Northwest League Championship, pitching them to a Game 1 win on Sept. 12, with five innings of scoreless, one-hit ball. He’d entered the game on a 9.2 consecutive hitless innings streak. That strong finish certainly boosted his probability of being protected.

Santos or Estrada are probably next up if they decide to protect more than one eligible player. Santos was shut down with an undisclosed injury on July 8 this year after making 12 starts for Vancouver, pitching to a 3.54 ERA in 48.1 innings, with 56 strikeouts. It was his 142 strikeouts over 86 innings (14.9 Ks/9 innings) between Dunedin and Vancouver in 2022 that put him firmly on the radar.

His scouting report says he “is still working to add more weight [to his 5-foot-11, 160 lb frame], which the Blue Jays hope will bump his fastball velocity up as he moves through his early 20s. It currently sits in the low 90s and touches 94 mph. His [60-grade] slider, which he uses heavily at times as a secondary pitch, can produce plenty of whiffs as a low-80s sweeper.”

A chance to draft the next George Bell or Kelly Gruber?

Conversely, with the Blue Jays front office hoping to add multiple position players this offseason to replace Matt Chapman, Kevin Kiermaier, Brandon Belt and Whit Merrifield; could they uncover another George Bell, a Rule 5 draft pick from the Phillies in 1980 who went on the win the AL MVP in 1987? Or another Kelly Gruber, who was drafted from Cleveland in 1983 and went on to two All-Star nods, plus Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards in 1990?

Here’s a list of all Blue Jays Rule 5 picks in their 47 year franchise history, highlighted by Bell, Gruber, Manny Lee and Willie Upshaw. The most recent pick was then-18-year-old Elvis Luciano from the Kansas City Royals in 2018, who stayed with the Blue Jays through their 95-loss 2019 season, but didn’t pitch with any MLB organization in 2023 after becoming a free agent.

Last year’s Rule 5 Draft

Fifteen players were selected in MLB’s 2022 Rule 5 Draft last Dec. 7. Of those, eight were returned to their original team, while seven remain on the 40-man rosters of the teams that drafted them. The ages of those players who stuck with the team who’d selected them ranged from 23-year-old Mason Englert of the Detroit Tigers to 33-year-old Wilking Rodríguez of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Two of the Rule 5 picks last year had solid 2023 seasons with their new MLB teams: 27-year-old Ryan Noda had a bWAR of 2.3, an OPS of .770 and OPS+ of 121 for the cellar-dwelling Oakland Athletics, banging out 16 home runs with 54 RBI in 128 games. Kevin Kelly, 25, went 5-2 with a 3.09 ERA and ERA+ of 135, pitching 67 innings with a WHIP of 1.015 for Tampa Bay.

What about Ricky?

Assuming he’s not called up before then, top Blue Jays prospect Ricky Tiedemann won’t be R5-eligible until December of 2025. Jays players eligible after next season include Damiano Palmegiani and pitchers Chad Dallas, Hayden Juenger, Connor Cooke and Conor Larkin.

We’ll see which R5-eligible players are left unprotected by their organizations on Tuesday, and start speculating on who the Jays could potentially draft themselves for the first time in the R5 Draft since 2018, as well as which players other teams might covet from the Blue Jays system.

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