ORLANDO, Fla. — MLB held its fourth draft lottery on Tuesday at the winter meetings, with the results revealing that the Chicago White Sox hold the first overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, scheduled to begin Saturday, July 11, in Philadelphia in conjunction with All-Star week next summer.
Since the league’s adoption of the lottery system in the latest CBA — the first edition was held at the 2022 winter meetings, with the Pittsburgh Pirates winning the No. 1 pick they would use to draft Paul Skenes in 2023 — no longer is the draft order based strictly on teams’ regular-season records. Instead, the first six selections of the draft are decided by a lottery system similar to the ones used in the NBA and the NHL, in which all non-playoff teams have a range of likelihoods of receiving the top pick. This was introduced in an effort to disincentivize teams from racking up as many losses as possible en route to guaranteed premium draft positioning.
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There are also rules that prevent teams from being lottery-eligible in consecutive years, which impacted three clubs in this year’s drawing. Teams that receive revenue sharing cannot be included in the lottery three years in a row, which meant the 119-loss Colorado Rockies — after picking third in 2024 and fourth in 2025 — were unable to draft higher than 10th in 2026. Teams that pay into the revenue-sharing pool (larger-market teams) cannot be lottery-eligible two years in a row; this impacted the Nationals and Angels after they drafted No. 1 and No. 2 this year. In 2026, they will select 11th and 12th, respectively.
The lottery featured at least one significant jump in draft position in its first three editions, introducing an element of unpredictability that resulted in some teams selecting much earlier in the first round than anticipated. The Twins had a 1.7% chance to land the fifth overall pick in the 2023 draft, but the lottery smiling upon them enabled Minnesota to select Walker Jenkins, who is now one of baseball’s top prospects.
In 2024, the Cleveland Guardians won the first overall pick (Travis Bazzana) with just a 2% likelihood, and the Cincinnati Reds selected second overall (Chase Burns) despite a 1% chance of such an outcome. In the lottery last year, the Seattle Mariners — already featuring a loaded farm system and having won 85 games in 2024 — cashed in on a 0.7% chance and jumped up to the third pick, which they used on left-hander Kade Anderson, widely considered the best pitcher available in his class.
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These stunning shake-ups have made the lottery a compelling event for the front offices of the teams involved, and this year was no different. While the White Sox snagging the top selection wasn’t a stunner — Chicago held the best odds of any team to get the pick, at 27.73% — there were several results that reminded everyone of the chaotic randomness a lottery can produce.
Which teams enjoyed the biggest lottery jumps?
Three teams in particular — the Rays, Giants and Royals — enjoyed notable strokes of luck, marking an exciting start to this year’s draft cycle. On the flip side, a few teams with considerably worse 2025 records — the Twins, Orioles and Cardinals — saw their first-round picks drop relative to their place in the reverse standings.
Coming off a 77-85 finish — their worst record since 2016 but hardly a horrible mark, all things considered — the Rays entered the lottery with a 3.03% chance of winning the top overall pick yet jumped all the way to No. 2. This will be the first time Tampa Bay has picked in the top 10 since they took Brendan McKay fourth overall in 2017, and it’s their highest selection since the Rays had consecutive No. 1 picks in 2007 and 2008, yielding David Price and Tim Beckham.
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Meanwhile, Kansas City and San Francisco reaped the benefits of an even less likely draw. The Royals’ 82-80 finish gave them some of the lowest odds (0.8%) to jump to the top of the board of any lottery-eligible team, yet they leapt all the way to the sixth pick, affording Kansas City its seventh top-10 pick in the past eight drafts. The Giants’ 81-81 finish gave them a 1% outlook of landing the top pick, yet San Francisco launched up the board to pick No. 4, the franchise’s earliest selection since taking Joey Bart second in 2018.
That these clubs will get to draft earlier than expected is exciting on its own, but it’s about more than just having fewer teams ahead of them on the board. Higher picks also come with larger associated bonus pool slots, which can afford clubs a greater amount of flexibility when allocating their resources over the course of an entire draft.
Who is the likely 2026 No. 1 pick?
With the draft order settled, we are at the earliest stages of being able to speculate about which amateur prospects could be in play for the teams picking at the top come July. And while teams’ draft boards are sure to shuffle many times in the months ahead, the results of this year’s lottery carried more weight than usual considering there is a consensus best player in the class, at least for now: UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky.
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It’s far too early to guarantee that the White Sox will select Cholowsky with the first pick next summer, but it’s undeniable that the shortstop has separated himself from his peers at this stage of the process. The son of Dan Cholowsky, who was selected 39th overall out of Cal-Berkeley by the Cardinals in 1991 and played eight minor-league seasons before becoming a scout, Roch (pronounced Rock) was a highly coveted prep prospect at Hamilton High School in Arizona but opted to go to college to raise his stock even further.
So far, Cholowsky been wildly successful in that endeavor, starring immediately for the Bruins as a freshman and elevating his game further as a sophomore in 2025, slashing a gaudy .353/.480/.710 with 23 homers and an impressively low 9.3% strikeout rate, all while playing stellar defense at shortstop. Assuming Cholowsky stays healthy and has another monster spring season as a junior for a loaded Bruins team coming off a trip to the College World Series, it’s difficult to envision another prospect unseating him atop this year’s class.
Who else is at the top of the class?
That’s not to say there aren’t other ultra-talented alternatives who could emerge next spring, whether for the White Sox with pick No. 1 or the cluster of clubs right after them. Beyond Cholowsky, there’s a pair of excellent high school shortstops who could be jockeying for position as the first prep player off the board: Grady Emerson and Jacob Lombard.
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Emerson is a tremendously advanced left-handed bat from Texas whom some evaluators consider to be in the top tier alongside Cholowsky and who could separate himself from the rest of the high school class with a big senior year. Lombard is a right-handed hitter from Florida who is the younger brother of Yankees prospect George Lombard Jr. and whose outlandish athleticism arguably gives him a higher ceiling than Emerson, though his hit tool isn’t quite as polished. Tyler Spangler is another prep infielder who could play his way into the first few picks, though his commitment to Stanford makes him less of a solid bet to start his pro career next year.
On the college side, Alabama shortstop Justin Lebron is an electric athlete whose star power has been on full display during his first two years in Tuscaloosa, but he’ll have to demonstrate that his hit tool can thrive against SEC competition as a junior. Georgia Tech’s Drew Burress presents an unusual profile as a 5-foot-9, right-handed-hitting outfielder, but he has serious right-handed power and might be able to stick in center field. AJ Gracia (Virginia), Sawyer Strosnider (TCU) and Derek Curiel (LSU) are three other college outfielders who fit the more traditional mold of sweet-swinging, left-handed hitters who should be selected early in Round 1.
On the mound, the high school crop features three left-handers who could emerge as viable top-five picks with big springs: Carson Bolemon from South Carolina, Gio Rojas from Florida and Logan Schmidt from California. We’re still waiting for a frontline arm to separate itself atop the college class, but the two pitchers who look like first-round locks right now are Florida’s Liam Peterson and Coastal Carolina’s Cameron Flukey.
