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With a full 40-man roster, the Twins won't be drafting anybody in this morning's annual Rule 5 draft.

I have mixed feelings about that, largely because the minor league geek in me loves the idea of spotting the player in somebody else's system that deserves a major league opportunity. The reality is that the current rules make it exceedingly rare for anybody worth devoting a roster spot to be available, Ryan Pressly being the exception. (Johan Santana, perhaps the most famous Rule 5 pick of this century, was plucked from the Astros system before teams were granted an extra year of minor league control.)

The Twins have in recent years tried hard, probably too hard, to make a Rule 5 pick pay off. It's probably better not to play that game at all.

I do expect the Twins to lose at least one player -- Tyler Jay, left-handed reliever and former first-round draft pick -- today, and quite possibly more. The Twins in the final years of the Terry Ryan administration spent a lot of high draft picks on college relievers, and many of them, like Jay, are now Rule 5 eligible and unprotected. Relievers are prime targets for Rule 5, since pretty much everybody carries at least 12 pitchers all season and pretty much everybody needs a mop-up man.

Rule 5 update

Tyler Kinley has yet to appear in a game for the Twins; Paul Molitor is, presumably, looking for a really low-leverage situation for his debut, and the Twins haven't had that yet except in the Jose Berrios complete game.

Meanwhile, Luke Bard, one of two pitchers claimed off the Twins in Rule 5, has gotten into three games for the Angels. He's pitched four innings and allowed one run on two hits and five strikeouts, all of which is good; he's also walked four, which is bad.

Luke Bard's game-ending strikeout of Jed Lowrie came on a 2,844 rpm elevated 4-seamer. That's what high-spin fastballs do -- get whiffs up in the zone -- and Bard's could be the highest we've seen since Statcast started tracking. pic.twitter.com/cnNxTOcttb

— David Adler (@_dadler) March 31, 2018

The other Rule 5 loss, Nick Burdi, is on the 60-day DL with the Pirates. His Rule 5 clock really doesn't become a factor until 2019; he had Tommy John surgery last season and isn't likely to pitch this year.

Bard versus Kinley is an intriguing comp. The Twins COULD have put Bard on the 40 last winter; they wouldn't have gotten Kinley in that case, but Bard would have options and could be sent to the minors. Kinley, as a Rule 5 guy, can't. There would be roster flexibility.

And the Twins will need a fifth starter next week, which will require a roster move. It's more likely that Gabriel Moya will be the demotee than that Kinley will be offered back to the Miami Marlins, but ... the reality of Rule 5 for contending teams is that it's really hard to devote a roster spot to that kind of player for the full season. Even if the Twins think Kinley is better than Bard, the flexibility matters. I'd rather have Bard.

And the payoff for keeping a Rule 5 guy is often slim. The Cincinnati Reds -- not a contender, of course -- two winters ago took catcher Stuart Turner out of the Twins system and kept him. He hit .134 in 82 at-bats. Last week,  his Rule 5 requirements satisified, the Reds waived him. He cleared and was outrighted to Triple A. So the Reds no longer think he's worth a 40-man roster spot, one year after carrying him on the active roster all season.

Rule 5 withdrawal

Thursday was the annual Rule 5 draft, when major league teams pick through the players their rivals deemed unworthy of protecting on the 40-man roster.

I doubt that there is a team as devoted to exploiting Rule 5 as the Twins. Rule 5 provided Shane Mack, a key outfielder on the 1991 World Series champion team. It provided Johan Santana, who became the best pitcher in baseball for a few years. More recently, and despite a tightening of the rules that meant less talent was being exposed to the draft, Rule 5 brought the Twins pitchers Scott Diamond and Ryan Pressly.

This year, for the first time in memory, the Twins skipped Rule 5, or at least the major league portion of it. In effect, they determined that there was nobody available in the field of potential picks who figured to be more valuable than the least player on the 40-man roster.

Which is certainly possible, even with a number of replacement-level players on the 40.

The Twins didn't lose anybody in the major league portion of the draft either.

They did make two selections, and lost two players, in the minor league portion. I won't get into those picks; the only minor league Rule 5 guy I know of who so much as reached the majors for the Twins was Brian Buscher, who had two partial seasons at third base in 2008-09.

Figure these guys as organization depth. If they emerge as something more, great.