Baseball's Rule 5 Draft is a draft unique to the world of baseball. It was designed to prevent franchises from keeping talent in the minors. Players with at least 4 years of pro experience, not on the club's 40-man roster and not signed beyond the current season are exposed to the draft. To protect players from going into the draft, they must be added to the 40-man roster before the Rule 5 Roster Freeze following Free Agency. During the Roster Freeze, all eligible players form the draft class. At that time, you can rank all of your players and fine tune your settings. As a word of note, though, there are several stipulations to drafting a player.
- You can't draft a player from your own franchise.
- You can draft a maximum of 10 players.
- You can only draft enough players to fill your 40-man roster. For example, if you have 38 players on your 40-man roster, you can only select two players.
- You must have enough available player payroll to cover the $50,000 it costs to draft a player plus his salary. If his salary is below the big-league minimum, it will be bumped up to the big-league minimum.
- And, of course, all of your draft settings will be adhered to.
NOTE: We have made 2 changes to MLB Rule 5 rules in that we strictly use 4 as the minimum years of experience to be eligible instead of 3 or 4 being the minimum which is based off of when they came into the league. The other change is that if a player has a multi-year contract, they are not eligible to be drafted. This way nobody gets stuck with a player with a massive, multi-season contract that they might not be able to get out of.