Our Winter meeting will be held on the morning of Saturday Dec 27 at 8:30.
The main event at the Winter Meeting is the annual Rule 5 Draft. Here are the pertinent rules:
1. Each team may designate up to 20 players on its off-season roster as protected. All the other players are eligible for the Rule 5 draft, including players dropped by teams during the fall.
2. Drafting in reverse order of the final standings from the just-completed regular season, each EFL team may select one unprotected player to add to its roster, along with his remaining contract. No team may add, or lose, more than 2 players in the Rule 5 draft. The draft continues until all teams have passed.
3. A drafted Rule 5 player must be added to the drafting team’s protected list. If this would put the list over 20 players, another player must be taken off the protected list immediately, before the next team drafts or passes.
4. A team that drafts a player in the Rule 5 draft pays the original team losing the player $250,000. Any player selected in the Rule 5 draft must be kept on the drafting team’s 25-man active roster throughout the following season, or be offered back to his original team at the Managers Meeting at the beginning of the month the player is dropped from the active roster. The original team may take the player back on his original contract terms, or any terms more favorable to it the two teams negotiate, and keeps the amount bid for the player in the Rule 5. Once the player has been offered back to the original team, the player may be demoted to the minor league roster, either by the drafting team or the original team.
The Winter Meetings do not count as a Managers Meeting.