As most baseball fans know, the annual Rule 5 Draft will be held later today at the 2014 Winter Meetings in San Diego. Dodgers General Manager Farhan Zaidi in an interview with MLB.com Dodgers reporter Ken Gurnick said he did not expect the club to be active in today’s Draft. That is not a surprise as the Dodgers roster is full at 40 and the likelihood of finding an unprotected minor league player who could remain with the team for the full 2015 season is beyond remote even if the team was to draft first on Thursday.

Nevertheless, there may well be some players of note in the Rule 5 Draft. Baseball America has compiled a list of players who may peak some interest. One such player is Delino DeShields Jr., son of the Delino DeShields, who came to the Dodgers in the now infamous Pedro Martinez trade in 1993. The younger DeShields spent the entire 2013 season with the Lancaster JetHawks of the California League so will be familiar to the fans of the Dodgers Class A+ affiliate, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. During the 2014 season the elder DeShields was the manager of the Louisville Bats the Cincinnati Reds triple A affiliate in the International League while his son played with the Corpus Christi Hooks in the AA Texas league.

DeShields’s home run in Game-3 of the 2012 Cal League Championship Series helped the JetHawks win their first-ever Cal League title. They would win again in 2014.
(Photo credit – Mark J. Rebilas)

The MLB portion of the Rule 5 Draft is followed by an AAA and AA phase in the draft. The Dodgers also might not be active in this portion of the draft, but in an effort to strengthen the farm teams in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, there is a possibility the Dodgers could find a couple of players to fill certain needs. Quite often, as we would most likely guess, catchers and pitchers are taken in this phase of the draft.

The minor league portion of the Rule 5 Draft follows the pattern of the MLB phase of the draft. On November 20 each major league club must file major league and minor league reserve lists with the Commissioner’s Office. The number of players on the reserve lists for each level of the minor league system is as follows:

AAA – 38
AA – 37
A – 35 per affiliate
Rookie – 35 per affiliate

Any players not on those lists become available in the draft. Drafted players are purchased at the cost of $12,000 (AAA Phase) and $4,000 (AA Phase). One significant difference with the MLB Rule 5 Draft is that a player does not have to be offered back to the club from which he was selected even though he is assigned to a minor league affiliate below the level from which he was drafted.

The Minor League phase draft picks usually are aimed at filling in minor league depth and often have no major league connotations. However, for that reason alone, it is a useful exercise. ”It’s a cheap and easy way to improve the depth of your farm system,” a scout from an American League club said. “It’s rare to get a position player (in the minor league phase) who becomes an impact player, but you’ll see clubs trying to buy arms in bulk and hoping to find more depth at catcher.”

Although the Dodgers have not been very active in the minor league phases of the draft, they did participate in 2012 by drafting two players. In the tenth round of the AA phase of the draft they selected infielder Elevys Gonzalez from the Pittsburgh Pirates. He spent the 2013 season in the Dodgers farm system but is no longer affiliated with any MLB organization. Right-handed pitcher Hector Nelo was taken by the Dodgers in the AAA phase of the Rule 5 draft that year from the Washington Nationals in the twenty-third round of the draft. Nelo performed very well with the AA Chattanooga Lookouts in 2013 with a 2.67 ERA in 45 appearances. His 2014 season was not as successful and he finished it with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos of the Southern League.

As pointed out, the purpose of the minor league portion of the Rule 5 Draft is to help organizations build depth and fill some roster holes as well as to try to give young players a new start with new organizations. It is rare but periodically a player is selected in the minor league phase of the draft who actually goes on to succeed in major league baseball.

Scott Podsednik, who had a brief stint with the Dodgers in 2010, is one such player. On December 15, 1997 he was taken from the Florida Marlins by the Texas Rangers and promptly assigned to the Double-A Tulsa Drillers for the upcoming season in 1998. From that point on, Podsednik moved around quite a bit on his journey to the major leagues but demonstrated what total commitment and perseverance to his dream could accomplish. He made his Major League debut on July 6, 2001 against the Dodgers, pinch-running for Ichiro Suzuki. In his first career major league at-bat against the Arizona Diamondbacks on July 15, Podsednik hit a bases loaded triple. He went on to carve out a very good ten-year career in major league baseball after being left off a Class-A reserve list in 1997.

Although there may not be another Scott Podsednik waiting in the wings, I would not be surprised if the Dodgers entered the minor league phase of the Rule 5 Draft looking for some roster depth for the Tulsa Drillers – their brand new Class- AA affiliate.