While the baseball world didn’t have the normal Winter Meetings experience this past week, there still were some similarities to the normal happenings, like a trade involving a big leaguer for prospects and of course, the usual Winter Meetings finale on Thursday: the Rule 5 Draft.

And what a Rule 5 it was! It certainly was more active than any of us thought it would be, with 18 players taken in the Major League phase and another 56 taken in the Triple-A phase. So we delayed our weekly Pipeline Inbox in order to field some of your questions about all of Thursday’s action.

Tell me about Will Vest. Never heard of him.

-- @Todd9115

I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t know who Will Vest was, either, until the Rule 5 Draft. Thanks to Jim Callis, who wrote up scouting reports on all 18 players taken in the Major League phase, we now all have some background. Here’s what Jim wrote about Vest, who was taken No. 10 overall by the Mariners:

Vest began his college career at Stephen F. Austin State as a shortstop before missing 2016 with Tommy John surgery and bouncing back on the mound to go in the 12th round of the 2017 Draft. He has added velocity to his deceptive fastball in pro ball, touching 97 mph, and uses a hard breaking ball as his second pitch out of the bullpen. He posted a 3.27 ERA and a 58/18 K/BB ratio in 55 innings between three stops in 2019, reaching Double-A.

And I’ll add this quote from Mariners assistant GM Justin Hollander, found in the story by our Mariners reporter Greg Johns:

“We’re really excited. He was the No. 1 target on our board. He’s a very athletic right-handed reliever who really took a step forward in the instructional league. His velocity was up, action was up and command was up. ... The step forward we saw with all his pitches and command was pretty significant.”

Does the pick traded from the Mets to the Pirates come with all of the same Rule 5 requirements?
-- @writetocenter

In a word, yes. I thought this question provides an opportunity to talk about the Rule 5 rules. By now, most of you know that a Rule 5 pick has to stick on the big league roster of the team taking the player or be offered back to the original team (it costs $100,000 to make a pick and the player would then be offered back to the original team for $50,000).

The same holds true for trades, like the one the Mets made with the Pirates on Thursday, sending Luis Oviedo to Pittsburgh for cash considerations (basically paying for the pick, I’m guessing). So now Oviedo has to stick with the Pirates or be offered back to the Indians, his original club. By the same token, if the Pirates were to try and designate Oviedo, another team could claim him. Then that team would be beholden to the same Rule 5 rules.

It’s not uncommon to see Rule 5 trades like this. Teams will work out deals ahead of time because they want to make sure they get the players they like. One of the most recent Rule 5 success stories, Brad Keller of the Royals, was actually drafted by the Reds from the D-backs and then dealt to Kansas City. Going back in Rule 5 history, you can see some of the best picks were traded guys: Josh Hamilton was taken by the Cubs and then sent to the Reds in 2006; Johan Santana was selected by the Marlins in 1999, then sent to the Twins.

Do you think the Pirates should draft a shortstop with the pick, even though they are stacked in the middle infield?
-- @pie_cory

We’ve talked about this top pick a lot, understandably, and answered this question at length in our most recent Pipeline Podcast, an episode that included an interview with Pirates GM Ben Cherington about preparing for that top pick.

The previous week, Jim and I did a quick “mock Draft,” where we took turns picking the top 10. The disclaimer was that we weren’t picking based on what we thought the team would do, so when I took high school shortstop Jordan Lawlar at No. 1, that wasn’t because I thought the Pirates would take him, or even that I believed he was the clear choice. I mostly wanted to point out that all the people (and trust me, there are many folks here in Pittsburgh who believe this) who think Vanderbilt right-hander Kumar Rocker is the slam dunk, no doubt, Strasburg-esque choice.

The combination of the unusual nature of where we are, with virtually no 2020 amateur season and no summer ball for a vast majority of college layers, combined with some questions about Rocker’s offspeed stuff and command, just made me want to tell people to take a breath and wait to see how it plays out.

And as we discussed on the podcast, to answer your question directly, when you pick No. 1 overall (I’d argue this is the case with most Draft picks, particularly the first-round ones.), you take the best player. End of discussion. You should not worry about depth at a position when deciding who to take. If this were a couple of years ago and the Orioles took Adley Rutschman No. 1 and the Pirates had the No. 2 pick, would they pass on Bobby Witt Jr. because they have other shortstops in the system? I would hope the answer would be no.

Is Lawlar the next Witt Jr.? We’ve heard those comps and we’ll have to see what happens in the spring. But that’s almost besides the point. At the end of the day, if the Pirates scouting staff and GM believe someone like Lawlar is the best player in the class, they should take him and worry about who plays where at PNC Park when they get to that bridge.