It’s MLB Draft Lottery day!
In an effort to combat (somewhat) the proliferation of absolute tanking across the sport, Major League Baseball moved to a draft lottery system prior to the 2023 edition of said event. The Pittsburgh Pirates managed to still be rewarded for their league-worst production in 2022 – they had the highest odds of landing the #1 overall pick, did so, and turned that into Paul Skenes.
Tonight, we’ll find out whether or not the Cincinnati Reds can get lucky again, as the draft order will be sorted out beginning at 5:30 PM ET on MLB Network. Cincinnati has the 7th best odds of the 16 teams who are entered into this edtion of the lottery process.
The lottery sorts out picks 1 through 6 of the upcoming draft, with the teams unlucky enough to land one of those coveted slots receiving picks 7 through 18 ranked on how poor their records were the previous year. A few qualifications go into the the determination of ‘who actually gets to be part of the lottery,’ though the biggest qualifier is ‘be a team who didn’t make the postseason in the previous year.’
Unfortunately for the abysmal Chicago White Sox, their status as a team that pays into revenue sharing (rather than receives it) means they’re ineligible for this year’s lottery despite going 41-121 during the 2024 regular season. Oof. Meanwhile, as MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo notes, the Oaklamento A’s don’t get to participate in the lottery this year because they’ve done so in each of the previous two years as a ‘payee club’ in revenue sharing.
The Cincinnati Reds are a ‘payee club,’ but you’ll recall that they did not receive a lottery pick for the 2023 draft despite having the fourth best odds of all teams involved – they landed pick #7 as a result and used that on Wake Forest ace Rhett Lowder. Therefore, they’re again in the running for a lottery spot this year after scoring the #2 overall pick last year (and using it on Wake Forest ace Chase Burns).
[/checks 2025 Wake Forest baseball roster and schedule]