Rule-5 Draft: Texas Rangers must finalize 40-man roster by Thursday

The Texas Rangers must trim the 40-man roster by Thursday if they wish to participate in the Rule-5 Draft during the MLB Winter meetings in San Diego on December 8th through December 11th. They’ll need to clear room for a few reason, one to make room to protect certain players from being plucked and also to allow them to add the draftee to the roster.

If the Rangers do draft someone from the Rule-5 draft that means they have to keep that player for the entire season or release him back to the team he was drafted from. That’s actually happened a few times in the past. Currently the Rangers roster sits at 40 players, but the Rangers are in the process of moving Aaron Poreda and Miles Miles Mikolas in a deal to sell them to a team in Japan.

They do plan to add Jorge Alfaro and possibly Luke Jackson to the 40-man roster to protect them from the draft. Some other notable players that are Rule-5 eligible are the following:

RHP Jerad Eickhoff
OF Jared Hoying
2B/LF Odubel Herrera
IF Hanser Alberto
LHP Will Lamb
OF Chris Garia
RHP Cody Buckel
C Brett Nicholas
RHP Abel de los Santos

The Rangers hopefully won’t lose anyone, especially pitchers Eickhoff, Buckel, Lamb and catcher Nicholas. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Rangers give Nicholas a chance to catch this season, especially since he spent a full year working on the transition of going from first base to catcher last season. Although it wasn’t a tough one since he spent most of his playing time in college at catcher. Nicholas is also a very good power hitter and considers himself doubles hitter.

Both Lamb and Eickhoff did very well with the Frisco Rough Riders this season and both could be an option for the Texas Rangers this season.

The Rangers should be moving Jorge Alfaro and Luke Jackson. Both will some day be major leaguers some day with the Rangers. If you wonder why the Rangers haven’t signed a big name catcher in the past few years it has been because they have one in the system already. Alfaro is quickly proving himself and should be major league ready very soon. But, expect the Rangers to plug the hole one more year at least before calling up the young prospect.