A look at today's Rule 5 draft

SAN DIEGO - The Rule 5 draft is the last event of the Winter Meetings and takes place this morning at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. Any player selected in this draft must remain on the selecting team's 25-man roster for the entire 2015 season or be offered back to his original club. Players are eligible for selection in the Rule 5 draft when they are not on their organization's 40-man roster and: * were signed at 19 or older and have been in the organization for four years; or * were signed at 18 or younger and have been in the organization for five years. This is the draft where the Orioles got Ryan Flaherty three years ago and pitcher T.J. McFarland two years ago. The Orioles selected infielder Michael Almanzar from Boston last year, sent him back and reacquired him. He then became a minor league free agent after this past season and the Orioles signed him again, this time to a minor league deal. He is expected to start at third base for Triple-A Norfolk. Unlike the First-Year Player Draft in June, where sometimes there is a consensus on what order the top players will be selected, the Rule 5 is more wide open and harder to predict. It simply depends on the preference of the selecting team. One club may take player X if it had the first pick while another team would prefer player Y. Some clubs will pass and not make a pick. Any team could've taken Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph in the Rule 5 draft last year for just a $50,000 price tag, but no one did. On Nov. 22, the Orioles added pitchers Mike Wright and Tyler Wilson to their 40-man roster to protect them from today's draft. They also re-signed their own draft pick, Oliver Drake to a major league contract, giving him a 40-man roster spot on Nov. 18 when the right-hander was officially a minor league free agent. Here is a lengthy list of O's minor leaguers currently eligible to be taken in today's draft: Jeffries Almonte Roderick Bernadina Parker Bridwell Bobby Bundy Michael Burgess Glynn Davis Jason Esposito David Freitas Mychal Givens Luis Gonzalez Ivan Hernandez Alvin Herrera Matt Hobgood Oswill Lartiguez Ronarsy Ledesma Williams Louico Greg Lorenzo Jason McCracken Alexander Mercedes Tanner Murphy Bennett Parry Jerome Pena Pedro Perez Jake Pettit Marcel Prado David Richardson Garabez Rosa Jose Rosario Johnny Ruettiger Alexander Santana Wynston Sawyer Janser Severino Sammy Starr Matt Taylor Ashur Tolliver Sebastian Vader Brian Ward Brenden Webb Suk-min Yoon Among this list, I would guess Bridwell, Davis, Givens, Rosa and Ward are being considered by other teams. Being considered doesn't mean likely to be taken, so we'll see. I'll take a wild guess and rank the most to least likely to be taken in this order: Givens, Bridwell, Ward, Rosa, Davis. In this Baseball America story from late November, the publication listed Givens as one of 10 players on its preliminary list that might get selected today. When I interviewed Jim Callis of MLBPipeline.com yesterday about the Rule 5 draft, he didn't seem to think there was a great chance the Orioles would lose a player today. "You never want to lose a player. But if you do, most of the time you will probably get him back and it is a guy you didn't deem worthy to be on the 40-man roster," Callis said. "Even if the Orioles do lose a player on Thursday, it's probably not a guy that is going to come back and haunt the franchise." The Orioles apparently have a list of about five players that they really like. But what if all five are gone when they pick? Their selection is late in the round (I believe 28th). One person here predicted not only that the Orioles would make a pick today, but that they might make two. Now that would be wild. The Orioles could always make a trade that would be announced sometime after this draft. That happens with a pre-draft agreement where they could have a team selecting higher than them draft the player they want for a price in return. Usually this involves a money exchange.