Rule 5 draft

For the minor-league portion, the relevant details are here. Yawn.

If you want to be knowledgeable about what did and didn't happen in the major-league portion of the Rule 5 draft, go read Dayn Perry's rundown of the top 25 eligible players up at Baseball Prospectus. It's a premium i.e. subscriber-only article. BP is working its way back into my good graces. They seem to have realized that the Pirates have a lot of fans who mostly still have a lot of pride and dignity despite twelve losing seasons or whatever it was that just came and went.

Perry also wrote a shorter version, with an explanation of the whole Rule 5 thing, for Fox Sports.

The Bucs didn't take anyone and didn't lose anyone in the major-league portion of the draft. I guess they can pass the hair shirt to the Cubs organization.

I don't think Ruz will wear it but surely some Cubs fan somewhere will blow a gasket and be full of self-hatred because his team lost some potentially-good "prospects" in the Rule 5 draft. And maybe the Chicago Tribune will publish an editorial in which someone suggests the team left two guys unprotected so they could make $100,000.