Rule 5 Draft: Hernandez, DeShields at top

With all the trades going down in the last few days -- if the hot stove were more than just a metaphor, it would have exploded by now -- it's easy to forget that the Rule 5 Draft was scheduled for Thursday, meaning a whole batch of Minor Leaguers were sent on the move for completely different reasons.

Before we get into who went where, a quick reminder on how the Rule 5 Draft works. Players who were signed when they were 18 or younger and have played five years or more and those who signed at 19 or older with four years of experience are eligible to be picked, so long as they weren't protected on their parent club's 40-man roster. (Or in the case of the Triple-A phase, they must be protected on the Triple-A roster.) A pick in the Major League portion of the Rule 5 Draft costs a club $50,000, but the player must remain on the team's 25-man roster for the entire 2015 season (barring injuries) or be offered back to his original club. Only three (Adrian Nieto, Tommy Kahnle, Wei-Chung Wang) of the nine players selected last year met this requirement in 2014.

Here are the players that were selected in the Major League and Triple-A portions of the 2014 Rule 5 Draft with comments on each. (Note: no player was selected in the Double-A portion, a la Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson last year, and passed picks were not included in the table below.)