The deadline to add players to the 40-man roster to protect them from selection in the Rule 5 Draft came and went on Tuesday. The Braves didn’t make any moves, leaving the likes of Blake Burkhalter, Ian Mejia and David McCabe, who have longer shots to be picked in the Rule 5 Draft, unprotected.
The one who surprised some/many was Burkhalter. He was quite good as a starter in Double-A, and struggled as a bulker in Triple-A, but he’s only 25 and was thought to be a quick turnaround option if placed in a reliever role. Setting aside the details and prospects of Burkhalter, what’s probably even stranger is that the Braves currently only have 37 guys on their roster, and that includes guys like Brett Wisely and the recently claimed Carson Ragsdale and Josh Walker, so the price of protecting Burkhalter and/or anyone else was a tiny bit of missed flexibility.
On the other hand, the Braves may have felt like there wasn’t a real risk of not protecting Burkhalter for two reasons. First, utility weapons chosen in the Rule 5 Draft are typically returned. Second, if they don’t, they rarely matter.
Prior to the 2025 season, there were 11 pitchers taken in the Rule 5 Draft. Seven of those were sent back or otherwise did not remain with their claiming team for the entire year. Another three have spent the entire year recovering from injury, and don’t really count compared to Burkhalter. The last was Shane Smith, who the White Sox used entirely as a starter.
Go back a year and you’ll find eight pitchers, four of whom didn’t last the season with their claiming team. Of the remaining four, one was a swingman starter, and of the three real relief guys, only Ryan Fernandez really gave his original team a sense of having their pocket picked. (Fernandez was then terrible in 2025, you see.) The other two guys, Anthony Molina and Stephen Kolek, were just generic, unexciting relievers.
Cut to 2023 and we have another eleven pitchers hired, only three of whom made it through the season with their new team. All three were truly terrible and somehow avoided being circumcised; Mason Englert eventually had a mini-breakout in 2025, but only after being traded to the Rays.
The lockout nullified Rule 5 of the pre-2022 season, but the pre-2021 version of the season was a disaster, with a total of 14 pitchers. Of those 14, five made it to the end of the season without being traded/returned/etc., headlined by Garrett Whitlock, who has turned into a massive Rule 5 coup for the Red Sox by being a dominant reliever every time he’s had a chance. The other three were a mixed bag: one was below replacement, one was not much above replacement, Trevor Stephan was terrible in his post-draft year but then great the next year, and Tyler Wells was great in his post-draft year and then moved to the starting lineup, where he was generic and injured a lot.
So if you squint and think about recent trends, pure reliever picks in Rule 5 aren’t exactly paying off, and the Braves may be counting on that. Or maybe they’re just going wild with their plans for the 40-man roster this offseason.
That said, the question remains the same: Do you think they’ll regret not adding Burkhalter and/or friends to the roster?
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