Giants pass on making a pick at the 2023 MLB Rule 5 Draft

The SF Giants chose not to make a selection with the 13th overall pick in the 2023 Rule 5 Draft. The Rule 5 Draft gives every MLB team with open spots on their 40-man roster an opportunity to select players on other teams who have been in professional baseball for some time and still are not on a 40-man roster. The Giants have taken advantage of the Rule 5 Draft in Farhan Zaidi's tenure, adding catcher Blake Sabol at this time last year.

However, players selected in the MLB phase of the Rule 5 Draft must remain on the active roster of the team that drafts them for the entirety of a big-league season without optioning them to the minor leagues. Otherwise, the player must be designated for assignment and subsequently offered back to the team they were drafted away from.

Given San Francisco's deep roster, both 26 and 40-man, adding another player who may not be ready to make significant contributions in 2024 would prove risky. After all, the Giants are clearly planning to be aggressive in free agency this offseason, which will likely make a crowded picture even more difficult to manage.

To avoid losing some talented players from the organization, the Giants already added a trio of pitching prospects-Erik Miller (Giants Top 40 Prospect), Trevor McDonald (Giants Top 41 Prospect), and Kai-Wei Teng (Giants Top 43 Prospect)-to the 40-man roster in the middle of November. They did notably leave young prospects Grant McCray and Aeverson Arteaga unprotected, and those decisions seem to have panned out. Both will remain in the SF Giants organization.