Yeah, the big question for me is whether the Phillies wanted to carry him on the 40 for a year without being able to call him up. There might be only a 10%-20% chance that someone would actually claim him because the bar for a draftee is to be on the 26-man roster all year.
If teams were pretty certain that the 40-man roster will increase next year (say to 42) then it would provide more room to keep somebody like Ortiz. But with a 40-man roster, we have seen that we just need to devote a half dozen spots to rotate AAAA players through the major league roster (like Bonifacio and Bedrosian and Rosso) and we really only carried a handful of players based on their future prospect status (Morales, Moniak, Dominguez). Guys like Haseley and Maton and Marchan are there for prospect status too, but also expected to play.
Is Ortiz good enough to take up a spot in a year where he probably would not see the majors? Not sure but a tough decision.
Matt Winkelman is updating his depth chart to include rule 5 eligibility:
Anyone below full season ball would be in little danger of being selected (though that includes Starlyn Castillo and Andrick Nava I think). Working our way down from AAA, here are the potentially eligible names that jump out at me: Scott Kingery (salary makes him trickier), Zach Warren, Jhailyn Ortiz, Luis Garcia, Victor Vargas, Ethan Lindow, Cristian Hernandez.
I guess Luis Garcia might be the first one to protect. After that really Ortiz and Hernandez and Hernandez is just so far away. Not sure any of those LHPs are worth the spot though remember Dohy already has one. And Falter.
This demands its own rule 5 thread, but plenty of time for that.