Pirates MLB Draft Lottery Odds: Will Pittsburgh land 2025 No. 1 pick?

Emma Lingan

2024 MLB Draft Presented by Nike / Richard Rodriguez/GettyImages

In what has become a highly anticipated component of baseball's annual Winter Meetings, the third annual MLB Draft Lottery will take place Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. ET. The lottery will determine the order of the top six picks in the 2025 MLB Draft, which are selected from among the 16 eligible non-playoff teams in 2024.

In what has come to be expected over the past decade, the Pittsburgh Pirates are one of said teams. In fact, they won the inaugural draft lottery in 2022, which allowed them to select Paul Skenes, the reigning National League Rookie of the Year, at No. 1 overall. It's safe to say that one's panned out pretty well for them so far.

The odds of the Pirates landing the No. 1 pick in this year's draft lottery are slimmer than they were a couple years ago, but they're definitely not zero. Let's take a closer look at the teams in this year's lottery and project where Pittsburgh might pick.

Pirates MLB Draft Lottery Odds: Will Pittsburgh land 2025 No. 1 pick?

The odds of a team getting the No. 1 overall pick are based on its win percentage from the previous season. The Pirates finished with a 76-86 record – a .469 win percentage – in 2024, giving them the sixth-best odds (5.31%) to secure the No. 1 pick.

The Colorado Rockies (.377) and Miami Marlins (.383) lead the way by a large margin in this year's odds, both tied at 22.45%. They are followed by the Los Angeles Angels (17.96%), Washington Nationals (10.20%) and Toronto Blue Jays (7.48%). The Pirates round out the top six.

So, while the Pirates' chances of landing their second No. 1 overall pick in three years may be less than favorable, it's still not impossible; the Cleveland Guardians won last year's draft lottery despite having just 2.0% odds of doing so and selected Travis Bazzana out of Oregon State.

If nothing else, the Pirates at least have a decent chance at picking in the top six of the draft order after picking at No. 9 last year. They will learn their fate Tuesday evening on MLB Network.

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Emma Lingan

Emma Lingan is an MLB Staff Writer for FanSided primarily covering the Pittsburgh Pirates. She has been covering baseball for more than a decade dating back to her time as a student at Wake Forest University, and she has won two gold medals as a member of the U.S. National Team delegation (2016 Pan-American Championships & 2017 World Baseball Classic). She is also a credentialed NHL reporter and a member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. You can follow her @Emma Lingan on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.