The Chicago White Sox will pick first in next summer's MLB Draft.
Chicago won Tuesday's MLB Draft Lottery after a trying 2025 campaign in which it went 60-102. The White Sox had a 27.72 per cent chance of earning the selection.
Introduced ahead of the 2023 season, the draft lottery determines the top six selections between the 18 clubs that don't make the playoffs. The remaining picks among those teams are sorted by winning percentage.
Along with the White Sox, the Minnesota Twins (22.18 per cent), Pittsburgh Pirates (16.81 per cent), Baltimore Orioles (9.24 per cent) and Athletics (6.55 per cent) rounded out the five teams with the best odds at the top pick.
The Orioles and A's both dropped out of the top six after the results.
The Tampa Bay Rays jumped from seventh in the odds to the second-overall pick.
Three teams were ineligible to participate in this year's lottery.
Despite winning just 43 games, the Colorado Rockies received lottery selections in both the 2024 and '25 drafts, and therefore were ineligible to win the top pick. The Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Angels were also ineligible to participate because they are "payor" teams – they give rather than receive revenue sharing money – and cannot receive lottery selections in back-to-back years.
This means that the Rockies, Nationals and Angels are locked into the 10th, 11th and 12th picks in the 2026 draft.
The Nationals won last year's lottery with just 10.2 per cent odds of winning the top pick. They eventually selected high school shortstop Eli Willits No. 1.
UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky is considered the favourite to be first off the board next July. As a sophomore in 2025, Cholowsky was named the Big Ten Player of the Year and the conference's Defensive Player of the Year as UCLA advanced to the College World Series. He slashed .353/.480/.710 with 23 home runs and 74 RBIs in 66 games.
The New York Mets, the second-biggest spenders this year behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, had a 0.67% chance and will wind up drafting 27th after missing the playoffs.
–With files from The Associated Press
3:06
