Major League Baseball announced the order of the 2025 competitive balance draft picks this week. There are two rounds to the competitive balance system, which is used to try and help out small market teams with an additional pick every year in the draft. The round A picks follow the 1st round, while the round B picks follow the 2nd round. This season Cincinnati was awarded a round A pick, and they will get the 6th pick following the 1st round in July of 2025.
Unlike other draft picks, these are able to be traded. While it doesn’t happen too often, it has happened a few times over the last handful of years. Cincinnati has been one of the teams that has traded a pick – back in January of 2019 they traded their competitive balance round A pick along with Shed Long to the New York Yankees in exchange for Sonny Gray and Reiver Sanmartin.
The exact spot of the pick isn’t yet determined because how free agency goes will come into play with some spots in the 1st round. The order of the 1st round is still yet to be determined. Next week at the winter meetings MLB will have the draft lottery. This is the third year that the draft’s 1st round will be determined by a lottery system – designed to try and stop teams from tanking to get high draft picks. Every team who failed to make the playoffs gets a chance in the lottery, with the worst teams having the highest odds – except when teams are ineligible (White Sox and Athletics in 2025).
Last year the Reds beat the odds in a big way. Based on their record they should have selected 14th, but the lottery worked out in their favor and they landed the 2nd overall pick and allowed them to draft Chase Burns. Cincinnati has the 7th best odds of landing the top pick in the draft in 2025 at 3.67%.
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