The prospects the Mets need to decide on before 40-man roster deadline — with a lockout wrinkle

Detailed summary

If there is a Rule 5 Draft, would teams risk losing some of their very top prospects given the comparatively small reward of an extra 40-man roster spot?

Arriving next week is the deadline to protect prospects from a draft that might not happen.

On Tuesday, the Mets and every other team will have to finalize their 40-man rosters ahead of the Rule 5 Draft, which is scheduled for Dec. 9 — or one week after the expected lockout begins on Dec. 2.

During the lockout, major league rosters will freeze, and thus a draft to add players to 40-man (and 26-man) rosters cannot happen. In 2021-22, the last offseason a labor fight was waged, teams acted normally ahead of the lockout — the Mets protected then-prospects Ronny Mauricio, Mark Vientos, José Butto and Adam Oller at the deadline — only for the draft to be canceled on March 10, when the two sides came to an agreement on the new CBA and decided there was no time for the very-back-end-of-the-roster machinations.

Five years later, the same scenario and risk-reward calculus is developing. The Rule 5 Draft surely will not happen on Dec. 9. Whenever the owners and union strike a deal — in March or April or May or maybe sometime in 2028 — would there be too much to do with an expedited spring training and suddenly fluid rosters for the lowly Rule 5 Draft to be taken into account?

Opening of the article, excerpted from New York Post. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.