INDIANAPOLIS—Most everyone left town as soon as the Rule 5 draft ended. But many minor league personnel, and some major league clubs, stayed behind for Thursday night’s banquet that officially closes the Winter Meetings.

Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year is one of several annual awards presented, including Topps’ organization of the year, the Giants (BA’s choice, awarded Monday, was the Phillies). The best part of the Giants’ presentation was seeing "The Ninja," Dick Tidrow, have to give a speech as he accepted the award. Tidrow isn’t known for his warm, fuzzy public persona, and having interviewed him several times for Giants’ Top 30 Prospects rankings, I can imagine that public speaking ranks just slightly above talking to Baseball America about his own players.

[...] Continue Reading »

The Twins, Tigers, Braves and Reds did not have Rule 5 picks because their 40-man rosters were already full.

*Nationals traded pick to Yankees for righthander Brian Bruney.

**Orioles traded pick to Rangers as part of the trade for righthander Kevin Millwood.

***Astros traded pick to Marlins as part of the trade for righthander Matt Lindstrom.

#After the draft, the Mets traded Monasterios to the Dodgers for cash considerations.

The Triple-A phase has started and the picks are actually coming a bit too quick to keep up with all of them. But some quick Triple-A picks of interest:

• Beau Vaughn, who has good blogging tools, goes to the A’s.

• The Mets took Johnny Lujan, a Puerto Rican righty with a low slot.

• There were 21 players picked, but no Garrett Broshuis. Really? Really?

It’s a thin talent pool that’s been picked over for the Rule 5 draft so far, and everyone’s passing in the second round of the major league phase. No one drafted a player. Seventeen (17) players went in the major league phase.

Nothing exceptional in the first round, no Josh Hamiltons, no one with Joakim Sorai upside. If I’m wrong about that in a year or two, I’ll happily eat those words.

Minor league phase to follow. [...] Continue Reading »

Orioles farmhand Steven Johnson, a righthander and the son of ex-big leaguer Dave Johnson, goes to the Giants, while the Cardinals select lefty Ben Jukich. We had Jukich a bit higher on our board . . .

The Phillies take Kenny Herndon from the Angels system, another righthander off their Double-A Arkansas team, joining Bobby Cassevah in being picked off that club.

The first round is over. On to the second round.

Chuck Lofgren, one-time Futures Game starter, goes to Milwaukee, while the Cubs took righty Mike Parisi from the Cardinals. Frankly none of these picks are exciting me.

The Rays take Armando Zerpa from the Red Sox, a lefty reliever whose work we are not familiar.

Seattle takes righthander Kanekoa Texeira and his slider from the Yankees. So the Yanks have lost Texeira. This one they can spare.

The Athletics took sinkerballing righthander Bobby Cassevah from the Angels. Toronto followed with righty Zech Zinicola, off the Nationals farm. He’s the former Arizona State closer. Man, it’s a busy first round.

New York selects Carlos Monasterios, the righthander in the Phillies system, a sinkerballer acquired in 2006 in the Bobby Abreu trade.

The Astros follow with Jorge Gimenez, a third baseman from the Red Sox system. He’s an offensive-minded minor league veteran.

The Padres pass.

Former UCLA righthander Hector Ambriz to the Indians with the fifth pick; kudos to MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo, who was on that.

The Diamondbacks take lefty Zack Kroenke from the Yankees system.

Orioles take lefty Ben Snyder from the Giants and will trade him to the Rangers in the Kevin Millwood trade. The Royals follow with lefty Edgar Osuna from the Braves.

The Nationals take Jamie Hoffmann first overall, and he’ll be traded to the Yankees for Brian Bruney. The Pirates follow with speedster John Raynor out of the Marlins system.

INDIANAPOLIS—The Rule 5’s about to be on, and our connection looks secure. If we lose our site here due to crazy Rule 5 traffic, we’ll switch to the BA Twitter feed.

The roll call is starting, so no more datelines or rumors. We’ll just blog every pick as fast as we can.

INDIANAPOLIS—Baseball is the only draft of amateur talent where teams are not allowed to trade draft picks. I’ve never been an advocate of trading picks—after all, sports such as basketball and football don’t trade minor leaguers, since they don’t have any. Prospect deals in baseball are the equivalent of draft-pick deals in other sports.

But this week’s Rule 5 draft gives teams a chance to trade draft picks, sort of. The slots can’t be traded, but this week has brought a slew of trades including players to be named, and most if not all are tied to the Rule 5. [...] Continue Reading »

INDIANAPOLIS—This is a familiar tune with the Rule 5 draft. Teams say there’s not much buzz, the list of talent is down . . . and then come Thursday morning’s draft, all kinds of stuff starts happening.

It’s not clear if this year’s Rule 5 will follow last year’s, where little was anticipated but 21 players got selected. Of those 21 players, just three have stuck in any significant fashion—Padres shortstop Everth Cabrera, Rangers righthander Darren O’Day (whom the Rangers picked up on waivers, after the Mets didn’t keep him in the Rule 5), and Pirates lefthander Donald Veal.

Several new names are circulating around regarding the Rule 5, though we’ve also had some names quoted back to us from our Rule 5 preview from last week, such as Giants outfielder Mike McBryde and catcher/infielder Robinson Chirinos of the Cubs.

Perhaps most disappointing is that one of those names is the last name we cut out of our early preview, righthander Craig Baker of the Rockies. [...] Continue Reading »

INDIANAPOLIS—Couple of quick news and thoughts on what’s going on, when we’re not giving away awards or doing other Winter Meetings-related stuff:

• Sources with both the Yankees and Nationals have confirmed the Yankees acquired the rights to the first overall pick in Thursday’s Rule 5 draft from the Nationals for righthander Brian Bruney. The Yankees have only made a pick in the major league phase once in the last decade, when they took Josh Phelps as a DH/first baseman in December 2006, at a point when he’d already played parts of six seasons in the major leagues. There are similar players available in this year’s Rule 5, but it seems unlikely the Yankees would give up a pitcher like Bruney to acquire a veteran player, such as former Yankees righty Scott Proctor or Rockies infielder Omar Quintanilla, one of several young veterans available.

It’s also possible the Yanks could pull a Braves and pick one of their own players, as Atlanta did in 1988. New York did leave several attractive players off its 40-man roster, but this is pretty unlikely.

I spoke to one Yankees official via text message about the deal tonight, and his only reply was, "Who would you take?" We’ll work to find the answer the next two days. [...] Continue Reading »

The first big story of the Winter Meetings happened before the meetings actually began. MLB.com is reporting the Royals have signed Cuban free-agent lefthander Noel Arguelles, reportedly for a major league contract worth $7 million. We’ll have more on the signing as we can touch base with sources here in Indianapolis.

Arguelles pitched for the Cuban junior national team (not the World Baseball Classic or Olympic bunch, but the top group of 18-and-under players) and defected while at the World Junior Championships in Edmonton, Canada, in July 2008. One scouting report this fall of an Arguelles workout, however, had him heavier and with diminished velocity, topping out at 89 mph in one session.

However, at his best, Arguelles evoked the good version of Francisco Liriano, as we wrote here (with apologies for having his name spelled in different ways.)

The Twins take Jason Jones, a righthander from the Yankees, while the Mets try to fortify their bullpen—again—by taking sidearming Darren O’Day from the Angels.

The Brewers then pop the elephant in the room, Eduardo Morlan, down at 25 overall. Morlan fell as hard as Brady Quinn!

The Phillies took righty Bobby Mosebach out of the Angels system, and the Angels lost yet another player with righthander Miguel Gonzalez going to the Red Sox.

The Rays took sidearming righty Derek Rodriguez from the White Sox. And the Cubs and Angels pass to end the first round, with 19 players selected. On to round two.

The Diamondbacks take James Skelton in an active first round, and the Marlins took lefthander Zack Kroenke, who made our pre-draft blog buzz. No huge surprises yet, other than Reegie Corona, who’s just a small surprise.

Here’s a new name: the Astros took Gilbert de la Vera out of the Royals organization. He’s a lefthander and the first guy I don’t know.