Red Sox select Garrett Whitlock in the Rule 5 draft
The Rule 5 Draft is overlooked by many major league fans, and it makes sense why. Players are only eligible for the draft if their team chooses not to protect them on the 40-man roster, meaning that the players up for grabs are not the biggest name prospects. The Red Sox, for example, only had kept one player from the Rule 5 draft during the 2010s: Jonathan Arauz, who was just released this past week after posting a .600 OPS in 147 at bats for the club.
In most years, the Red Sox and most other contenders choose to sit out the Rule 5 draft, considering the players they choose have to stay on the big league roster for the entire year. In 2020 however, there was a player they simply could not pass on. After coming to the Yankees as an 18th rounder in the 2017, Garrett Whitlock broke out in 2018, posting a 1.86 ERA and advancing all the way to Double-A.
Yet after a midseason 2019 Tommy John surgery, the Yankees decided they weren’t going to wait around, and left him unprotected for the 2020 Rule 5 draft. Their archrivals pounced, and made Whitlock a critical piece of their bullpen. He was so dominant that he ended up being Alex Cora’s most trusted reliever in the postseason.
His 2022 campaign has not been nearly as strong, as he’s struggled to adjust to a move to the rotation, and he’s currently on the IL with a hip injury. Yet even if Whitlock never is quite as dominant as he was in 2021, his contributions to the Red Sox should far exceed what is expected of a Rule 5 pick.