Draft Lottery: Odds, order, how to watch, more
It’s become a highly anticipated mainstay of the offseason: the MLB Draft Lottery.
This is the third year that a lottery during the Winter Meetings has been used to determine the top of the Draft order, with this year’s drawing taking place in Dallas on Tuesday, Dec. 10 at 5:30 p.m. ET. It will be broadcast live on MLB Network and streamed on MLB.com.
All non-playoff teams are entered into a lottery for the top six picks. This year, 16 of those 18 teams are eligible for the lottery. Here they are, listed in order of the odds of them getting the No. 1 pick, with their 2024 winning percentage in parentheses.
22.45 percent -- Rockies (.377)
22.45 -- Marlins (.383)
17.96 -- Angels (.389)
10.20 -- Nationals (.438)
7.48 -- Blue Jays (.457)
5.31 -- Pirates (.469)
3.67 -- Reds (.475)
2.45 -- Rangers (.481)
1.90 -- Giants (.494)
1.50 -- Rays (.494)
1.22 -- Red Sox (.500)
1.09 -- Twins (.506)
0.82 -- Cardinals (.512)
0.68 -- Cubs (.512)
0.53 -- Mariners (.525)
0.27 -- D-backs (.549)
0.0 -- White Sox (.253 – ineligible for lottery pick)
0.0 -- A’s (.426 – ineligible for lottery pick)
As a team that received a lottery pick in the 2024 Draft and is a “payor club” -- a team that gives rather than receives revenue sharing dollars -- the White Sox are not eligible for this year’s lottery. The A’s are a “payee club,” but landed lottery picks in 2023 and '24, and payees cannot receive a lottery pick three years in a row. They can pick no earlier than 10th and 11th in the 2025 Draft as a result.
Last year, the Cleveland Guardians won the lottery despite having just 2.0 percent odds of doing so and selected Travis Bazzana out of Oregon State. In the first lottery, the Pirates were tied for having the highest odds of landing the top pick (16.5 percent) and that turned into Paul Skenes.
The order of the postseason teams are determined by when they get eliminated and their revenue-sharing status. Those 12 teams will choose in the following order: Wild Card Series losers, Division Series losers, Championship Series losers, World Series loser, World Series winner. Within each of those groups, clubs will be sorted by revenue-sharing status, with payee clubs selecting before non-payee clubs. If two or more clubs have identical winning percentages in the immediately preceding championship season, the selection order of those clubs will be determined by winning percentage in the next prior championship season, with any remaining ties resolved by the tied clubs’ respective championship season winning percentages in each preceding year, until the tie is broken.
Here's the Draft order for the 12 postseason teams:
19. Orioles (.562)
20. Brewers (.574)
21. Astros (.547)
22. Braves (.549)
23. Royals (.531)
24. Tigers (.531)
25. Padres (.574)
26. Phillies (.586)
27. Guardians (.571)
28. Mets (.549)
29. Yankees (.580)
30. Dodgers (.605)
After the first round, the lottery results won't affect picks Nos. 1-18, which will be in reverse order of winning percentage.