The Rule 5 draft is usually much ado about nothing, the least exciting hour on the baseball calendar, at least since the 2006 CBA gutted the player pool for the draft in an abject reduction of player rights. This year was a marginal exception, with a couple of legitimate prospects taken in the major league phase. They are not impact players (certainly not any top-100 types), but players who do project to some major league value.

The Twins were aggressive in exposing some big-name pitching prospects to the draft, but didn't lose Kohl Stewart (the fourth pick in the 2013 June draft) or Ryan Eades (their second-round pick the same year). They did lose Nick Burdi, their 2014 second-round pick, a right-handed reliever who is 98-100 with a plus slider that can be 88-92 when he's healthy … which he's not, as he had Tommy John surgery around last year's midpoint and likely won't return to the mound at any level until July. The Phillies took Burdi and swapped him to Pittsburgh for international bonus pool space.

I think Burdi offered the best combination of future value and potential not to screw up your roster in 2017 of any candidate for this Rule 5 draft. The Pirates can DL him for at least the first three months of the year, rehab him for a month, and then call him up on Aug. 1 if all goes well. He can certainly be a 12th man on a staff with his present stuff, as long as he's throwing any strikes at all, even if he's not all the way back, and such a plan would get him 60 days on the active roster. Another 30 days to start 2019 would make him permanent property of the Pirates. For a guy with this kind of stuff, that's a very reasonable use of a roster spot.

The Tigers led off the draft by taking Arizona outfielder Victor Reyes, who is most likely a fourth outfielder in the majors, not enough of a runner or defender to handle center field but lacking anywhere near the power to profile in a corner. He does have good feel to hit from the left side, but has been significantly worse from the right side twice in the last three years, and despite reports that he's a plus runner, he was consistently average when I saw him in the AFL in October.

Among the outfielders taken, I preferred Carlos Tocci, whom the White Sox took from the Phillies and then traded to the Rangers. Tocci can definitely play center, and he has a good swing with consistently high contact rates. He has simply never put on the weight expected of him when the Phillies signed him out of Venezuela at age 16 six years ago, so he hits for very little extra-base power, but I think he's a fourth outfielder now with some nonzero chance that he gets to enough strength to become more.

With the second pick, the Giants took right-hander Julian Fernandez from the Rockies. Fernandez pitched in the bullpen for Low-A Asheville last year. He has an 80 fastball without much else, and in particular has nothing to get left-handed hitters out. He's 22 already and 2017 was his first time pitching in full-season ball. I didn't get this pick at all.

Two players with big-league experience went in the major league phase.

Burch Smith made 10 appearances for the Padres in 2014, throwing hard but not too well, with a 6.44 ERA that, to be fair, he thoroughly deserved. Since then, he was traded to the Rays, blew out his elbow, and didn't throw a single pitch in a minor league game between April 2014 and June 2017. He does throw hard, though.

Anthony Gose played for Toronto and Detroit in parts of five seasons, all as an outfielder, but converted to the mound in 2017, throwing 10⅔ innings, allowing nine runs, and hurting his elbow in July. Gose pitched in high school as well, up to 97 back then with a violent delivery, and showed comparable velocity in pro ball, but he didn't pitch at all for more than eight years and apparently, his arm didn't like the sudden move back to throwing that hard with that effort. He was never the hardest worker as an outfielder, and I find it hard to believe the Astros, who took Gose from the Rangers (who had just signed Gose as a minor league free agent), can carry him all season.