You've heard it said before. It's a long road to the Major League's. To finally break the barrier and make it from AAA, or even lower in the minor's, to the bigs is a dream come true. It's takes a lot of hard work, dedication, talent, skill and sacrifice to even get drafted these days.
Many, many players spend a lifetime toiling around the minors, serving as filler and depth for most ballclubs. Merely happy to scrape out an existence playing the game they love so much. For a few of these lifetime minor leaguer's, they have an opportunity after 4+ years of service time to be drafted during the offseason in the Rule 5 draft.
In the Rule 5 draft, any player not on a team's 40-man roster and with 4+ years of experience is eligible to be drafted by another team (for $100,000), provided the team can keep the player on it's 25-man ML roster all season. If not, he must be offered back (for $50,000), first passing through waivers. When on waivers, any team can claim the player and give him a shot, provided he still remains on a ML 25-man roster.
This brings us to the long road of young Rey Wan. Obviously, there is something in his skill set that attracts a lot of the owners around the league. Since being selected by Minnesota (from Arizona) in the Rule 5 Draft, he's also made it to Philidelphia and all the way up north to Toronto. He's once more hit the Waiver Wire, and who knows where his whirlwind journey shall take him next. Perhaps he'll make it down south to Florida or Tampa, maybe he'll finally head back West to a place like Oakland or San Diego or even home to Arizona. I hear Cleveland is looking for a Center Fielder, maybe they'll be next to take a chance.
It'll be interesting to see where this kid ends up, and if his talent let's him stay in the bigs not just this season, but for many to come. Keep your eyes peeled for the weary traveller. Who knows? Maybe he'll end up starting at 2nd for Minnesota?
No comments:
Post a Comment