For lots of writers and pundits who have bigger stories to chase and microphones to hold, the Rule 5 draft isn't interesting enough to distract them from the procedural hell of their impending flight home from the winter meetings and the way said flight will likely exacerbate their state of dehydration. Those who enjoy it do so in an excessively weird way, the way my great grandmother eyes the turkey neck as everyone finishes their Thanksgiving dinner. The Rule 5 draft is for baseball nerds and hipsters. So if you'd like to learn about the Rule 5 process and the players of note selected therein, get on your fixed-gear bicycle and follow me to the next paragraph.
Players who have been playing professional baseball for four or five years (depending on the age at which they initially signed) and who have still not made their club's 40-man roster are eligible for selection. When a team picks a player, that team pays $50,000 to the team from which they took the player and must retain that player on their 25-man roster for the entirety of the upcoming season. If the player doesn't stick on the active roster (and the team can't find a way to plausibly stash him on the disabled list for large portions of the season) he is offered back to his original team at the price of $25,000.
In recent years the Rule 5 guidelines have changed and the pool of talent available during the process has been diluted. And yet teams have managed to find useful players lately as well. Rangers starting center fielder Delino DeShields, Mets changeup artist reliever Sean Gilmartin and Phillies center fielder Odubel Herrera, who led the 2015 Phillies in WAR, were all Rule 5 selections last year. Here, among the 16 players selected today during the major league phase of the draft, are the prospects I find most interesting.