Pittsburgh Pirates: The First MLB Draft Lottery is Tonight

The Pittsburgh Pirates fans should be paying close attention tonight.  Major League Baseball will have a lottery to determine the top picks for the 2023 Draft.

As part of the new Collective Bargaining agreement, which was signed last offseason, Major League Baseball will hold its first-ever Draft Lottery.  The Pittsburgh Pirates are in the mix for the first pick overall pick, but more about that later.  For now, let’s take a look at the Lottery System.

First and foremost if you pay attention to the National Basketball Association (NBA) of the National Hockey League (NHL), then you are probably familiar with this concept.  Essentially it is a way to stop teams from tanking or throwing in the towel on a season.  This gives an opportunity for other teams to get the first overall pick, not just the team that “tanked” the best.  If that even makes sense. It rarely goes in the order that is expected in both of those sports.

For the Pittsburgh Pirates, this means that because they finished 3rd from the bottom they have a chance at the top pick for the 2023 MLB Draft.  The bottom 3 teams, also including the Nationals and Athletics, all have a 16.5% chance of being awarded that top selection. The Reds are right behind the Pirates in the odds with 13.5%.  Something else to pay attention to, for more go to MLB Trade Rumors. The Bucs are essentially guaranteed a top 6 pick in this new system.

Now other teams are still in play for that pick.  In fact, 18 teams will have lottery balls up for selection.  The percentages do not fall below 5% until slot #8.  So it seems logical to expect the Bucs to at the very least get a top 5 selection.  In a perfect world, the Bucs would get the top pick selection again.

The Draft Lottery will be held on MLB Network at 8:30 eastern.  Again this is the first time that this is being done, so it will be interesting to see how it is presented on air.  This could also be a good opportunity to start learning some of the top names that hopefully will be in the Pittsburgh Pirates range.