The 2024 regular season is now complete, which also means that the details of the upcoming draft lottery are now locked in. Carlos Collazo of Baseball America laid out all the details in a post this morning.
In an effort to reduce tanking, the Players Association pushed for a lottery in the most recent collective bargaining agreement. Starting with the 2023 draft, the top six picks were determined by a lottery held at the Winter Meetings, with each club that misses the postseason having a shot at the top pick. Teams with worse records still have the best odds of getting the top picks, but nothing is guaranteed. One year ago, the Guardians won the top pick despite having just a 2% chance of doing so, eventually using that pick on second baseman Travis Bazzana. If two teams have the same record, their record in the previous season serves as a tiebreaker.
The three teams with the worst records usually have the same odds of getting the top pick but there’s a notable exception. To discourage teams from undergoing yearslong rebuilds, the lottery rules limit how often a club can receive a lottery pick. Revenue-sharing recipients can’t have lottery picks more than two years in a row while other clubs can’t have lottery picks in consecutive years.
Since the White Sox aren’t a revenue-sharing recipient and had a lottery pick in 2024, the rules state that they can’t pick higher than 10th in 2025. That’s despite a dismal 121-loss season that was easily the worst in baseball. The Athletics are a revenue-sharing club but had lottery picks in both 2023 and 2024, meaning they can’t pick higher than 11th next year.
Those clubs will still have balls in the lottery but they will be ignored if they win, which actually happened last year. Per J.J. Cooper of Baseball America, the Nationals would have secured the first overall pick in 2024 but they were ineligible due to having a lottery pick in 2023. The draw was redone, which is when the Guardians got the top pick.
Here are the lottery clubs and their odds of getting the top overall pick, adjusted to account for the fact that the White Sox and A’s aren’t eligible:
- Rockies (61-101): 22.45%
- Marlins (62-100): 22.45%
- Angels (63-99): 17.96%
- Nationals (71-91): 10.2%
- Blue Jays (74-88): 7.48%
- Pirates (76-86): 5.31%
- Reds (77-85): 3.67%
- Rangers (78-84): 2.45%
- Giants (80-82): 1.9%
- White Sox (41-121): Ineligible
- A’s (69-93): Ineligible
- Rays (80-82): 1.5%
- Red Sox (81-81): 1.22%
- Twins (82-80): 1.09%
- Cardinals (83-79): 0.82%
- Cubs (83-79): 0.68%
- Mariners (85-77): 0.54%
- Diamondbacks (89-73): 0.27%
Playoff teams will be sorted based on their postseason results. Teams that lose in the early rounds pick ahead of those that advance further. Teams that are eliminated in the same round are separated first by revenue-sharing status, with recipients picking earlier, and then in reverse order of regular season record. These rules only impact the first round of the draft. From the second round onwards, teams pick in reverse order of standings, aside from compensatory and competitive balance selections.
Teams that surpass the third tier of the competitive balance tax ($277MM in 2024) have their top pick moved back ten spots. If such a club gets a top six pick, then that penalty is applied to their second-highest pick instead. That won’t be a factor this year. Per RosterResource, the three clubs projected to be over that CBT line are the Mets, Yankees and Dodgers. Atlanta appears to be right on the line but general manager Alex Anthopoulos has said the club stayed under, per Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal Constitution on X. Regardless, all those clubs made the postseason and won’t be in the lottery.
Lottery based is dumb. Its stupid to not give the worst team the best pick. It doesn’t stop bad franchises from sucking, ie see the White Sox. One of the worst teams ever will continue being terrible, while a Bye-winning playoff team got number one pick.
Well, blame the owners and the PA who agreed to doing it in the new CBA.
PA? While it is in the agreement. Should they really concern themselves with team balance? I’d say this is 95% an owners decision.
The PA pushed for it so youd be incorrect
The PA thinks it will stop teams from tanking. And if teams don’t tank, they will spend more on players.
Teams that are bad are almost always bad for organic reasons. Either their organization stinks or their players all just got old together. Tanking is simply the coup de gras. I doubt this changes anyone’s mind.
In fact, I’d guess it is just the opposite. A team like the Nats, with B2B top picks like Harper and Strasburg might be more inclined to spend extra to put themselves over the top.
And having the WS pick #10 or whatever, will absolutely, positively NOT motivate the WS to spend more.
Which is exactly what Washington did. Spending big on veterans like Werth and Scherzer.
If tanking is something anyone really cares about eliminating, the solution is remarkably simple. Every non-playoff team gets one ping pong ball. Equal odds for everyone.
Tanking wouldn’t improve odds, and nobody would tank out of a playoff spot to get into the lottery.
Every year could end like this year for the White Sox where the worst team that year could still end up with a bad draft pick. It would ensure poorly run teams weren’t rewarded for being poorly run.
Every non-playoff team gets one ping pong ball.
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Having the RS, DBacks and Cards get the same chance at the 1/1 as the WS & Marlins, will only make it worse.
Teams with a -0- chance of making the playoffs will never spend.
The lottery based system is just more of Rob Manfred’s efforts to turn baseball into the NFL or NBA. Notice every rule change mirrors something that exists in the other two organizations.
The PA pushed for it per this article..how is it manfreds fault?
Not a perfect system, but it’s good because it doesn’t reward teams for being bad. The solution would be to just try and build a competitive team or spend (look at royals going from 100+ losses last year to alds this year). The white sox being bad is because of their owner/management.
I like the draft lottery but would still like to see some changes.
First, I think if you lose 100 games or more you should not be allowed a pick in the top five. Top five picks should have equal odds followed by the remaining teams having equal odds as well. I also think that teams who lose 100 games or more and spend less than a predetermined amount should have their picks pushed back even further. Lastly, being a luxury tax paying team should remove you from lottery eligibility regardless of record.
I’m a supporter of large markets as they drive MLB but MLB should figure out a way to encourage smaller markets to spend more on their major league roster. Revenue sharing hasn’t done enough so maybe a posting style system.
“It doesn’t reward teams for being bad” — The entire point of having a draft and giving bad teams higher picks is parity. If it isn’t doing that, then it doesn’t work. The lottery is attempting to over-complicate something simple to hide the innate issue of bad teams being rewarded for terrible management or deliberate tanking. Thus giving off the appearance of parity. Ironically, it doesn’t do help parity at all, merely lessens it.
As for your example of the Royals, Bobby Witt Jr. was selected without the lottery. Had they been under the lottery system, they’d have less 50% chance of that happening. 100% to less than 50% is kind of a big loss. Not exactly great for parity when penalizing bad teams like this under the guise of parity.
It’s not under the guise of parity but simply to keep teams from being absolute embarrassments. It’s worth losing a little parity to stop teams from tanking. If bad owners like Reinsdorf and Fisher still don’t care, then it’s their own fault that their franchises aren’t getting as high of draft picks as they otherwise would.
ClevelandSteelEngines
As for your example of the Royals, Bobby Witt Jr.
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Taking this to its ultimate conclusion, if the Royals don’t have Witt, then there is a decent chance they wouldn’t have bothered to pursue Lugo and Wacha. And if they didn’t push the tanking by trading Chapman to the Rangers, they wouldn’t have Ragans.
IMO, the PA got this exactly backwards. You need to encourage teams to spend, not discourage them from tanking.
but simply to keep teams from being absolute embarrassments.
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That won’t do anything.
The WS were automatically losing 100. The As were almost automatically ;losing 90. Neither team was going to magically start spending just because they aren’t in the lottery.
The lottery didn’t solve anything.
The Royals weren’t tanking in the first place, merely rebuilding, so their situation is irrelevant. If they didn’t have Witt, it would’ve just taken an extra year or two before they were done rebuilding and ready to spend.
That’s only because the A’s and White Sox have terrible owners who just doesn’t care about dropping draft picks or avoiding further embarrassment.
It does work as a disincentive among most owners. We just can’t see it yet due to how recently the draft lottery has been implemented, and also not knowing if any teams since then would have started tanking by now but ultimately decided not to do so. because of the draft lottery. Even in the years to come, it will be difficult to definitive find an example, but those examples will still be there behind the scenes.
Disagree, it keeps teams from continually tanking like the Astros did a decade ago which led them to where they have been.
Naw, there should be a top pick weekend tourney of the bottom four teams where the draft order is decided. The fact that no sports league has found away to do anything with the worst teams is still crazy to me.
How it shoud look:
One day between the wild card and divisional.
Both teams get a double header
1 v4 and 2 v 3
(Second game) Winners play each other and losers play each other
Draft order decided
Do it in a minor league park complex to embarrass the remaining teams slightly.
How do you pay the players?
Union wanted it. Thinking was it would help prevent teams from tanking. Obviously they thought wrong and anyone other than them seen it coming. Owners happily gave them it though in exchange for actually meaningful benefits.
Teams trade away players to shed salary and rebuild farm system. Higher draft pick is only a small benefit of tanking. Teams have to tank as 100m can’t possibly compete with 200 300 without reloading or rebuilding eventually.
If anything lottery makes tanking for a draft pick more appealing. We can’t possibly be the worst team in baseball but 3rd worst has the exact same odds. 4 isn’t far off. 5 is reasonable.
It does work for most teams. It’s just that the worst owners still don’t care, so the blame is on them.
It’s fine if teams just rebuild, but nobody wants to see them tanking. There’s a big difference between the two methods.
Don’t see the difference. It’s mostly small markets and bad markets. To spend 100 to 120 million they need 2 million plus attendance. They can’t spend their way to be good. So their record is out of their control.
Teams that can spend 200 million and only spend 100 or something sure. No reason for ny la etc to tank.
Absolutely right, and I never even considered your second point. If you are going to finish with 80 wins (TB), you might as well win 76 (Pirates) nad have a 5.31% chance instead of a 1.5% chance.
Last year, Pitt and Clev were tied with 76 wins. Cleveland winds up with the #1, and Pitt with the #9. All Pitt needed was one more loss.
Pittsburgh still lucked out and got the best player in the draft at 9. Needs lots of development. They probably aren’t going to be able to do that. Why Cherington needed fired.
Small benefit? The Astros during their tank period drafted 11th (Springer), 1st (Correa), 1st (Appel LOL), 1st (Aiken didn’t sign became 5th), 2nd (Bregman) and 5th (Tucker). That was their core.
The current O’s are a product of tanking. 11th (Rodriguez), 1st (Rutschman), 2nd (Hjerstad), 5th (Cowser), and 1st (Holliday).
The prospects in the trades are just extra incentive.
Exactly they got good players at 11 and 5 and busts at #1.
The good ole pre lottery days. Now you tank and are the worst team in baseball you share the best odds with 2 other teams. Another 2 teams have strong odds. And yet Cleveland Cincinnati end up with top picks.
But the number 1 pick isn’t more valuable than drastically dropping payroll for 5 6 7 years. Saving hundreds of millions is the big reward. Then getting all prospects from the trade. It’s nice to pick #1 or even really high but not as nice as hundreds of millions. And teams do find good players all through the draft even mid or late first round.
The #1 pick had 3 out of 4 hits on elite prospects that were more valuable than you’d get in trade. And in the non-1st pick years, you were still guaranteed top 5 picks.
Potentially falling to 7th is a notable disincentive in any given year. Being locked out of the top 10 is a massive disincentive. Teams will still do it because they are cheap and revenue sharing framework without a minimum spend requirement is flawed, but it does limit an important reason for it.
Then it’s the owner’s fault for putting an absolutely terrible team on the field two/three years in a row, just as intended. They still got their top pick last year, and they’ll still get a middle of the first round pick while picking early in all the subsequent rounds.
It’s not about keeping bad teams from sucking but about keeping them from being absolutely horrible embarrassments to MLB. If the White Sox and the A’s want at least a chance at another Top 9 pick next year, then they need to improve the team enough with stopgap free agents (while still rebuilding) to get somewhere around 90 losses or better, or something like that. However, both teams have terrible owners that are still very unlikely to do so, in which case they’ll be further punished in the draft next year.
Meanwhile, the Guardians were not a playoff team last year when they earned the chance for that pick.
Long live the relegation system.
Lottery makes no sense especially in baseball when 1st overall absolutely does not mean they will even be an MLB player.
Some teams suck on purpose. Others don’t. If teams sucked less then this wouldn’t be an issue. I don’t mind the lottery system as long as it’s transparent… IF it’s transparent. It reduces the rewards for sucking on purpose.
In the end, teams gotta spend more to win more. Teams like the Sox/Rays/Rockies/Athletics gotta pony up if they want to be actual contenders. And I don’t mean spend dumb money like the Rockies did with Kris Bryant.
Merely a gimmick so the large markets get a shot at the top pick if they miss the playoffs despite big spending. More evidence who Robby the robot serves.
The Commissioners from every professional sports organization are hired by the respective owners so it’s only natural that Rob the Robot will side with them
Mediocre or worse teams that miss the playoffs are still mediocre no matter how much they spend. They shouldn’t be punished in the draft just because they spent a lot on payroll and still had a bad year. Even before the lottery, it was still possible for a team with a pretty large payroll to suck badly enough to have the worst record in MLB and get the top pick.
1) By that logic, this benefits the players because it diminishes the incentive to cut spending.
2) Revenue sharing recipients still get an advantage from this system, as they can remain in the lottery in consecutive years, rather than just one.
It would be pretty cool if Nationals end up with 1st overall and select Ethan Holliday, same state but different teams for both Holliday kids.
So, a new National Holliday?
The Nationals don’t play in Maryland, although it is only a few miles away.
Don’t forget, the draft lottery was at the demand of the Players Association. If a big spending team gets the first pick it’s on the players, not the owners or the commish.
Nice shill account Mr. Fisher
41 wins and not eligible for the lottery. Yikes
They knew and agreed to the rules
Worst modern-day record and can’t pick any higher than 10th — love it!
As with the NBA, I’ve never supported draft lotteries. If a team wants to tank, let ’em. They only hurt themselves in the long run with less revenue.
True tanking makes for an awful viewing product, but a very effective strategy(e.g. Astros, Orioles, A’s and 76ers). Therefore, they need heavy handed punishments to discourage it (especially because there is no minimum spending threshold). It says a lot that the White Sox, knowing they couldn’t get lottery odds, didn’t try to put a better product on the field and finished all time bad.
Next year, it is very possible that the Blue Jays, Nationals, Rockies, Angels, Rangers and/or Giants will be ineligible for lottery picks, so will be incentives to be competitive.
When did the A’s tank? I must have missed that.
If fans want to support a poor product that’s on them.
That’s what the A’s are doing currently, except the motive is different.
Instead of tanking as a long term strategy to eventually build up a good farm system and young core of stars, they’re tanking to facilitate their move out of Oakland (to Las Vegas) despite it being avoidable if they had taken Oakland’s stadium deal or just properly maintained the Colisseum (as they were legally obligated to do) in the first place.
It says a lot that the White Sox, knowing they couldn’t get lottery odds, didn’t try to put a better product on the field
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I said this since ink was dry on the CBA. Bad teams have no incentive to spend. A rising team like the Royals, the Os, etc., have far more motivation to spend now than they would if they were a .400 team.
The year after the A’s traded away every star player and starting aggressively tanking they were one of the top 5 most profitable companies in the MLB. Revenue sharing, tv contracts, and I imagine a lot of other factors create a system that doesn’t necessarily reward a quality product. Pirates were also a top 5 on that Forbes list.
Owners tank because they’re trying to save money on player salaries and say ‘well, we’re doing it for the higher pick for the future!’ The lottery at least eliminates that excuse to a degree.
Profitable teams will be profitable no matter how hard they tank. I’m sure White Sox ownership still made a profit this year easily. I’m tired of smaller market teams crying poor all the time. Spend some money and make a decent viewing experience for fans!
Why are the Angels’ odds lower than the Rockies and Marlins? With the W. Sox ineligible, Angels have one of the three worst records, and considering the White Sox swept them in the last week of the season, they certainly qualify as one of the worst teams.
I think the 3 worst records status is assigned up front, and they don’t go back and add the 4th worst if one of those 3 is ineligible.
Mlb tankathon
I look forward to the Angels picking 10th in 2026.
lol White Sox
Such BS! And MLB wonders why they are loosing fans!
Losing.
I hate having to correct the spelling of rational adults but it’s spelled “ losing “
Losen up. Its just a misspell, no sense in loosing your mind.
Loose fans are just the worst
I to agree
It’s in the article.
We’ll even lose at the lottery.
This is such a stupid rule; I’m not a White Sox or A’s fan but damn that hurts. I know the players agreed to it but just another way baseball is losing the plot
I think you have that backwards. I am pretty sure that was done at the insistence of MLBPA. I can’t imagine why the owners would want the current lottery system.
fans forget that players hate playing for small franchises in turrible small cities.
There are plenty of players who go where the biggest paycheck is. If they “hate playing for small franchises in turrible small cities” that’s on them.
Free agents worst allocation of resources. Outbidding every other team? Extend your own players for much better return.
Then blame Reinsdorf and Fisher for tanking despite the new punishment against it.
What a beautiful system. The White Sox could have taken about a hundred steps starting a half-decade ago that would have prevented this outcome, but they were so committed to not advancing that they’re stuck until a decade after Reinsdorf’s death. Good job on MLBPA for this
Stop being archaic and let them trade draft picks.
I agree on trading picks but with a caveat. A team can’t trade picks in the same round in back to back years and can’t trade picks in consecutive rounds. This keeps teams from just dumping all their picks so they don’t have to spend money on new players.
I don’t see how teams dumping all their picks to another team hurts any thing. Limiting how many picks a team can have per normal round so one team doesn’t hog up all the talent seems like a good idea.
Regardless, any sort of normal pick trading seems like it would be a net positive for competition
Working on it
Draft picks don’t need to be tradable when players can already be traded while still in the Minor Leagues. Trading up or down on draft day also has no purpose when almost all the guys picked aren’t going to reach the Majors for at least a year and usually much longer (if at all).
Trading up or down on draft day also has no purpose when almost all the guys picked aren’t going to reach the Majors for at least a year
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Of course it has a purpose, many of them in fact.
1-Just like in the NFL, sometimes you just don’t think the players that are available are worth your pick.
2-Or sometimes you absolutely love the guy that is still available and you want to trade up.
3-Or maybe you trade for or against need. Maybe the consensus #1/3 is a SS, and you are stocked with SS’s.
4-Maybe you want to draft more in one year or another.. The Os are pretty loaded, so maybe they might want to punt their 2025 draft board for the 26/27 draft board.
1 & 2. The MLB draft is such a crap shoot that there are no guys that can be considered “worth your pick” or not to the degree that trading up or down is needed among mere minor league prospects, except maybe the #1 overall or overall top few picks, but there is no reason to ever want to trade down from them in exchange.
3. Likewise, NOBODY drafts based on need for the MLB draft, as those needs will unpredictably change by the time the prospects are ready for the Majors. They basically just pick the best available players each time, save for some concerns about signing bonuses and general signability.
4. There is no way to predict when you may want to draft more in one year than another. Just because the Orioles are stacked now doesn’t necessary mean they will be in three to four years when most of their 2025 draft picks are ready for the Majors (among those who actually make it.).
This everyone agrees on! Why the heck isn’t it allowed when every other major sports league allows it??
Thaw media drives the top pick anyway. The scouts find those diamonds ie Piazza, Hershiser, Pujous, Lofton, many more. But I also dislike these rules of the lottery. Too much lawyering!
Maybe name some players in the statcast YouTube era. There will be some. Just not as common to miss talent.
So apparently going 41-121 does not guarantee you a first-round pick because you were in the lottery last year.
Number 1 pick, not “first-round pick.” Sorry.
60 to a 45+ is a big loss in talent and prospect capital.
White Sox are so bad they are ineligible to continue as a franchise let alone get a draft pick.
To those complaining about the White Sox not getting top 10… Going into the season they knew that and still chose the course they took. They probably didn’t expect to be historically bad, but they didn’t do much to try and win.
Tanking in baseball guarantees you nothing. Unless you know there is a generational talent coming out the next year then it’s all a crap shoot. There have been 3 players taken first that never made the majors and even more who never really contributed.
40% of the first round picks have never see the majors.
Guarantee you shed payroll. Get prospects. Better odds are better. Higher the draft the bigger player pool and bigger amount of $ to sign draft picks.
The lottery system sucks. The white Sox deserve and need the first pick. 121 losses pick 10th. Don’t tell me the lotto picks cannot be rigged as well. All the new rules in baseball suck.
Amen, brother.
I like the idea of a lottery. Gives teams more will to compete if they are doing okay at the deadline.. see Pittsburgh. If their push fails they still got a shot at number 1 pick.
Seems like they made it more complicated than it needs to be though. Who cares if it is a revenue sharing recipient?
I can understand reducing some ones odds if they keep getting top picks, but excluding them from a top 10 pick based on the franchise and not the team seems off to me.
I kinda like the idea of limiting the lottery to non-playoff teams who had the BEST record from September forward and excluding the wild-card losers. There are a few kinks there, but something that prevents tanking on purpose might help with competitive balance.
That, and an NFL-style salary cap.
I know, I know. That’s DOA.
Prevents teams like the Sox from tanking but they don’t have the balls .
Remember- trout was picked 25th
Unfortunately teams aren’t smart enough to find a trout every year at 25. Would have a much better chance drafting 1, then 2, then 3. One of those picks is better than a higher one according to war but in a 100 or 1000 years that should change. Higher the better odds of getting a better player.
You’d think but there were a lot of bad teams in the 70s, ie cubs who drafted #1 but there are players who never reached the majors.
I don’t think. Someone did the work and published it. So I know. Whatever pick Posey was is the outlier. Few really great players taken their but whoever picked before them had the chance.
Curious why the Rockies are not demoted here as well.
Not RS recipients and had a lottery pick last year – #3, higher than the Chisox. What gives here?
I kinda like the lottery system BUT it does have its faults HOWEVER I think some adjustments beyond the lottery can help teams be “better” or “not tank”.
HYPOTHETICAL THEORY – So if they used a system, for their revenue sharing, that forces teams to invest into payroll or reach certain levels, before receiving their full revenue sharing amount, it might help. For example if a revenue team was entitled to 20M, in order to get the full amount they must have a payroll of 100M and for each 10m they are under that 100M they lose 5M of their total or something like that.
Then remove the Luxury Tax and everybody pays into revenue sharing with teams with the highest percent above average paying the most payed into it and lowest the least payed in if any. The teams that have lowest payroll, below average payrolls, are entitled to the most return (based on above rules) and highest payroll least return if any. This allows big market teams to spend what they want BUT the more they spend the more goes into the pot for other teams.
The White Sox deserve nothing except a forced sale or relegation.
I think the draft lottery has helped my A’s not to take crap just to save money . I fully think they went to lottery to keep the A’s from getting top stuff , but A’s used to pick crap to save money . Lottery Nick Kurtz . Top picks and the A’s pass on Aaron Judge for crap that is still being DFA
Why don’t the Angels have the same odds as the Rockies and Marlins? I thought the three worst teams had the same odds.
Because they are 4th worst. Just because the White Sox are ineligible, that doesn’t make the Angels odds better.
Got it. Thanks:
The mlb draft going from straight reverse order, to a 6 pick deep lottery (twice as deep as other major sports) makes no sense. Excluding teams who “won” the lottery from the top 9 is even more ridiculous. The white Sox picked number 5 last year they didn’t “win” anything they picked worse than would be expected with straight reverse standings. The NHL has an appropriate rule that bars WINNING the lottery (meaning the #1 overall pick) more than twice in 5 years so no team tanks and gets to lucky with 3 #1 overall picks. Stopping teams from two top 6 picks is silly. Especially in a sport like baseball where two star players don’t make a team a title contender.