The Rule 5 draft happens today as baseball’s winter meetings continue to unfold, and the Los Angeles Angels are very much in the mix.
No one really knows how active they’ll be—this is the Angels, after all—but they do have a pitcher who’s very much a candidate to be claimed. The Angels could also claim one of the other top Rule 5 players named in a story written by Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com.
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The pitcher Mayo mentioned was left-hander Samy Natera Jr., who checked in at number 20 on this list. The reason he’ll draw attention is because of his velocity—according to Mayo, Natera throws his riding heater almost 80 percent of the time.
The good news is that Natera had a high strikeout rate of 13.4 K’s per nine innings. That makes him an ideal Rule 5 candidate if a team thinks Natera is worth a roster spot that would keep him around for an entire season.
The downside with Natera is control. He also walks 6.6 hitters per nine innings, which means there’s some development work to be done. Natera is also 25, which means he’s also approaching the end of his window as a prospect, if he’s not already there.
For the Angels, what all this says about Natera is that new pitching coach Mike Maddux has probably looked at his tape and mechanics and decided Natera isn’t quite a fit at the moment. Natera is one of three pitchers the Angels promoted to the 40-man roster shortly after the season, likely with the idea that Maddux would evaluate them and make a call on who stays and who goes.
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The Angels also have another velocity-based candidate who’s not going up for grabs in a Rule 5 scenario, and that’s Joel Hurtado. Hurtado threw the fastest pitch in minor league baseball this year at 104 mph, so it’s entirely possible that he was kept over Natera based on that eye-popping number.
None of this is a straight-up negative for Natera, however. He could easily become an effective left-handed specialist for either the Angels or another team if he’s claimed, and lefty specialists basically last forever with long careers in which they make a lot of cumulative money.
The fact that the Angel are willing to pass on him is actually sort of a good thing, in that it means the Halos are making sound, systematic decisions about the eventual makeup of their staff with a successful, experienced pitching coach making the calls.