Dear Mr. Answer Man:
There are some pitchers coming over from baseball in Korea. Drew Anderson, Anthony Kay, and Ryan Weiss, to name three. All three of those guys used to pitch in MLB, then went to Korea to pursue whatever. Now they’re back.
Can we draft them? If so, are they rookies or veterans? We have their current contract information. It makes sense to me to draft them as veterans with minimum bids based on their current MLB contracts. But they’re not on the FA list, because they were gone, I guess.
Did you already rule on this? If so, I’m sorry – I can’t remember it.
— Rueful Amnesiac
Dear R.A.
Don’t worry, your memory is fine. Other things may be amiss, however.
- Ryan Weiss has yet to debut in MLB, even though he’s 29 years old. So he will show up on the debutant list when (and if) he does.
- Anthony Kay is on the Free Agent list, having signed a two-year contract at $6,000,000 a year. Normally this is how they get back on our list: they sign an MLB contract, I notice it, and I stick them on the list.
That leaves the case of Drew Anderson, who is not on the list even though he appeared in MLB as “recently” as 2021 and signed a $7,000,000 2026 contract with the Tigers in December. He shows up on MLB transaction reports on December 16. I apparently missed seeing his name on the MLB transaction report for that day.
This is a case where an eligible player is not on the list. Here is what I said in my note Sunday about cases like Anderson’s:
if I mistakenly leave a player off the list, we have a fairly good remedy: put him on the list for the next draft. This, and the desire not to disadvantage an owner who doesn’t have time in the last days before the FA draft to check to see if anyone has been added to the draft, are reasons why we do not add a player to the March FA draft list. Like any other rule, this one can be changed by a majority vote of the league on the petition of any three owners.
I would appreciate your help in remembering to add Anderson to the list for the end of April draft — if no one initiates a rule change to get him on the list this month.
— EFL ANSWER MAN
