no. it's stupid that it even gets brought up. if you're going to hand-wring about josh hamilton not being kept by the cubs in the rule 5 draft then you mineaswell just bitch about every awesome player that we passed on in the amateur draft and international free agency. Didnt we have a glut of (probably mediocre) OFers at the time, too? Was that "mineaswell" sarcastic? It doesn't even matter. The guy was 25, out of baseball for 3 years, and not playing all that well in A ball, albeit in a small sample. Do you realize how small the odds were that he'd be able to hit major league pitching and stick on the 25 man roster all year? i'm not disagreeing with you. just made it less likely we could "take a flyer". it wasnt too long ago that we rule 5 drafted some pitcher and tried to hide him in the pen.