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

It was 3 p.m. ET and Ethan Purser was leaving his phone, laptop, watch and all other electronics in his room with no idea how lucky his organization was about to be. 

He had been in his new role as Guardians scouting director for all of three days. He was thrown into the fire, starting his job at the Winter Meetings, running around from conference room to conference room in Nashville, Tenn. It only made sense that he would also get familiar with the second annual Draft Lottery process, too. 

This was supposed to be low-key. The Guardians had no expectations to be the No. 1 overall pick. Each club had the option of sending a representative to the lottery drawing that took place in a private ballroom two-and-a-half hours before the MLB Lottery broadcast on MLB Network. So, Purser went. 

There were rules to observing the drawing. The first was leaving all electronics behind to make sure no news was leaked to the public -- not even to other members of their organizations.

“Essentially, I walked in with my room key and a notebook,” Purser said. 

Purser and 15-20 other club representatives filed into a room and were briefed on the process by MLB officials. Each team’s record from 2023 determined the odds it would have to get the No. 1 pick. The worse you finished, the higher the chances you had. 

Some teams had as high as an 18% chance. The Guardians? They were at 2%.  

Then, 14 balls were put into an air mix machine. Each ball was labeled with a number, and little wind gusts shuffled them before a button pulled one into a tube to be read aloud. The order of the first four numbers drawn represented a team.

Each executive was handed a piece of paper that listed every possible number combination in the air mix machine. Those with higher odds had more combinations lean in their favor. MLB officials read the first combination: 3-9-11-13, a sequence that meant the first pick went to…the Nationals. 

Wait, what? 

The Guardians weren’t technically supposed to have the first pick. The Nationals were called, but Washington had the No. 2 pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, making them ineligible to pick higher than No. 10 in ’24, per the rule that “payor clubs” -- categorized as clubs that give vs. receive revenue-sharing dollars -- cannot be selected in back-to-back lotteries.

So, the Nationals’ drawing was voided, and the Guardians had a second chance.

As the next numbers were called, Purser couldn’t believe what he was hearing. 

“Seeing some numbers come across and you’re looking at your chart like, ‘Oh wow, this could happen,’” Purser recalled. 

It happened. A Guardians sequence was called, which meant the Cleveland organization would have the first overall pick for the first time in franchise history. 

Purser couldn’t believe it. He was overwhelmed with emotion. He just wanted to tell the rest of his front-office members what they could prepare for, but he couldn’t. He was locked in a room. 

By 4 p.m. ET, the Draft order was official, but the broadcast wasn’t scheduled to start until 6 p.m. ET. So, Purser had to just sit in the room and anxiously pass the time. How would any MLB executive do that? Playing board games, of course. With Yahtzee and Sequence on one side of the room, others started a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament, using Cheez-It crackers and cookies as poker chips.

There were no windows or clocks. Purser had no idea how much longer he had to wait to break the news to his coworkers. It wasn’t until 5:58 p.m. ET, when the doors swung open, freeing him to race to his phone. At that point, Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti was already backstage in the broadcast room, waiting to celebrate with Minor League field coordinator John McDonald, who served as the team’s representative on stage on MLB Network. 

“I ran out of the room, seeing what had just happened, wanting to be around teammates, knowing that it was going to be a moment of collective jubilation, excitement for what’s to come,” Purser said.

The news went public. Antonetti hugged McDonald on stage and couldn’t contain his excitement for hours after the show aired. The organization is fresh off of a season in which fortune rarely fell in their favor. This was a refreshing break after everyone was convinced that they had no chance of being the No. 1 overall pick. 

“Johnny Mac and Ethan,” Antonetti said with a big grin, “our good luck charms.”