What are the rules of the Rule 5 Draft and who will the Cardinals protect?

Next week is the next major landmark on Major League Baseball’s offseason schedule.

While the St. Louis Cardinals won’t be involved in the handing out of the major awards presented by the Baseball Writers Association of America (save for some likely down ballot Cy Young votes for Ryan Helsley), they will have some difficult decisions to make when it comes to protecting players from the Rule 5 draft.

That annual event is scheduled for December 11 at baseball’s winter meetings in Dallas. Last year, it proved a bounty for the Cardinals; their selection of Ryan Fernandez netted them a reliable reliever who pitched to a 3.51 ERA across 62 appearances and 66 ⅔ innings pitched.

It’s Fernandez, and players like him, who generally form the core of the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft. Ten teams made selections last year, and eight of those 10 were pitchers. That is, in part, a function of the ever-present crunch for innings that teams seemingly feel at all levels of their systems, right up through the big leagues. It’s also due to some of the measurables at play in modern pitching development and the way that scouting departments are able to identify potentially small tweaks that could have big payoffs.

The Cardinals saw precisely that in Fernandez, identifying an issue in his delivery which they believed prevented him from accessing repeatable mechanics and therefore his best fastball. They set to work making those changes in spring and were immediately rewarded, and while his success may be an outlier, it is demonstrative of what all 30 teams are hoping to achieve.

Protecting players by selecting them to the 40-man roster, then, becomes about the strategic choice to secure the most vulnerable assets in house rather than the players who might best be able to contribute in the big leagues. Outfielder Matt Koperniak, for instance, hit 20 homers and posted an .882 OPS for Memphis last season. And yet he remains unlikely to be protected from the Rule 5 simply because outfield depth is in more ready supply around the league and his relative value is less than younger arms, despite him being more or less ready for the majors.

The two most obvious players in need of protection this winter are two of the Cardinals’ top three pitching prospects, righties Tink Hence and Tekoah Roby. MLB Pipeline ranks Hence as their second-best prospect overall and Roby sixth, with lefty Quinn Mathews between them at third.

Hence continued to show progress and flash outstanding tools in 2024 when he was on the field, though remaining on the field continues to be an issue. He struck out 109 hitters in just 79 ⅔ innings for Double-A Springfield and kept his walk rate under three per nine innings while doing so. Those innings were spread over 20 starts, demonstrating the commitment the Cardinals have had to keeping his workload as limited as possible even as they try to bring him along.

Hence is listed at 6-foot 1-inch and 195 pounds but appears in person to be significantly more slight than that, and building strength has been a focus even as occasional arm issues have kept him off the mound.

That innings total is his second highest since being drafted in 2020, and he’s yet to reach 100 innings pitched in a single season as a professional. Still, his raw talent is undeniable, and the Cardinals are now rapidly approaching the inflection point at which they’ll have to determine whether their building strategy to date has been the right one.

Roby made just seven starts for Springfield last year and three more in a rehab setting for Low-A Palm Beach, accounting for just 38 ⅓ innings. That follows a 2023 season comprised of just 58 ⅓ competitive innings in the Texas and St. Louis systems. Acquired as part of the Jordan Montgomery trade at the 2023 trade deadline, Roby was then in the midst of a rehab cycle which he has been seemingly unable to escape.

The challenge for any team which might select Roby is the likelihood that he may not hold up physically over the rigors of a big league season.

Rule 5 picks must be on a team’s active major league roster or injured list for a full season, or they must be offered back to the team from which they were selected. Even though it’s difficult to imagine most teams taking that gamble, Roby’s talent level is high enough that the Cardinals will remove the temptation.

Outside of those two, options abound throughout the system. Righty reliever Andre Granillo put up big strikeout numbers for both Memphis and Springfield, and he fits the model of a player teams might believe they could benefit from with minor tweaks.

Righty Ian Bedell struggled with his command for Memphis, but was himself just rounding into form after a long rehab process. Righty Edwin Nuñez had a disastrous, command-free stretch as a starter for Springfield, but has a history of success as a reliever. Righty Darlin Saladin will be just 22 next season, but his strikeout numbers and ability to eat innings at both levels of A-ball show a great deal of promise.

The 40-man roster is important in that it reinforces the big league team. Last season, only righty Sem Robberse spent the entire season on that roster but did not pitch in the majors. This is the group from which the Cardinals will be eager to see growth and development, especially given their decision to punch the reset button. It’s from this group of arms, then, that they’re eager to see surprises emerge.