How the Mets' Draft Lottery odds might shake out

This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

How the Mets finish this season will determine more than just their placement in the record books. It will also have a pronounced impact on their future.

Because the Mets exceeded Major League Baseball’s highest Competitive Balance Tax threshold again this season, their first-round pick is at risk of dropping 10 spots in next year’s Draft. Only the top six picks in the Draft are protected from that penalty, and those top six will be determined via MLB’s new Draft Lottery system instituted last year.

Simply put: The closer to the bottom of the league the Mets finish, the higher their chance at a top-six pick. If the Mets don’t get a top-six selection, the penalty will ensure that they won’t pick higher than 17th in the Draft.

That’s a huge difference, both in terms of potential talent and slot money available to sign their selections. Entering Monday’s play, the Mets had the eighth-worst record in the Majors, two games better than the Nationals, who were sixth-worst. Should the Mets get a lottery pick, their less valuable second-highest selection would shift back 10 places instead -- a rule designed to penalize free-spending teams without devastating a noncontender’s chance to rebuild.

It’s something team officials will watch with interest over the final week of the season. What the Mets won’t do, however, is tank in hopes of increasing their odds of a bottom-six finish. (In fact, MLB’s system is designed to discourage that exact type of behavior.)

“Winning the game always matters,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said, speaking more generally about his club’s priorities down the stretch. “That stuff always stings when you’re not going to accomplish the goals that you wanted to accomplish. I’m not going to be so flippant to think that things like that don’t matter. It’s always part of the equation. For me, anyway.”

If the Mets finish with the sixth-worst record in the Majors, they will have a 53.3% chance of having a protected top-six pick. If they finish with, say, the eighth-worst record, those odds will drop to 31.9%. (Nonplayoff teams that don’t receive a top-six pick will draft in reverse order of the standings, before CBT penalties are assessed.)

Note that last year, the sixth overall selection came with a slot value of $6.63 million, while the 16th pick had a $4.43 million value. That’s money a team can use to sign any of its Draft picks -- not just the first one.

Confused? The bold type is this:

• The worse the Mets finish, the higher their odds of a top-six Draft pick
• If the Mets don’t get a top-six Draft pick, they won’t select higher than 17th
• The higher the Mets pick, the more money they’ll have available to sign their selections

Still, the Mets obviously aren’t tanking to achieve this -- they’ve provided plenty of evidence to that end in September, which has seen them win series against the contending Mariners, Diamondbacks and Marlins. Showalter has spoken often about the responsibility that noncontending clubs have to play as hard as possible.

“It’s a transition,” first baseman Pete Alonso said, “but getting guys experience, and getting guys playing with guys that are going to be here for a really long time -- creating a culture -- I think that’s a huge thing with what we’re doing right now.”

But should the Mets falter over the final week, they’ll at least find a noteworthy consolation prize at the end of it.