White Sox to select 5th in 2024 MLB Draft

In last year’s inaugural MLB Draft Lottery, the White Sox won the 15th overall pick and selected SS Jacob Gonzalez.

2024 MLB Draft – Top 18 Selections

1. Cleveland Guardians
2. Cincinnati Reds
3. Colorado Rockies
4. Oakland Athletics
5. Chicago White Sox
6. Kansas City Royals
7. St. Louis Cardinals
8. Los Angeles Angels
9. Pittsburgh Pirates
10. Washington Nationals
11. Detroit Tigers
12. Boston Red Sox
13. San Francisco Giants
14. Chicago Cubs
15. Seattle Mariners
16. Miami Marlins
17. Milwaukee Brewers
18. Tampa Bay Rays

Since the lottery is still a new concept to Major League Baseball, here’s a general overview of how the process works:

• The order of the first six picks in the 2023 MLB Draft will be decided at the lottery, which will involve only the 18 teams that did not make the 2022 postseason.
• The remaining 12 teams who do not receive a top-six pick will make their selections in the order of their 2022 winning percentage.

As part of the latest collective bargaining agreement in March, teams are no longer guaranteed a high pick based on their poor play. Instead, the lottery includes all teams that failed to reach the postseason and didn’t forfeit their first-round pick, such as for signing a qualified free agent. In addition, any “large market” teams cannot select in the top six picks in consecutive years, and “small market” teams are unable to do so for more than two straight seasons. The goal of this is to discourage teams from purposefully tanking to get the top overall pick, made popular by Houston from 2011-13.

As alluded to already, a team’s odds of winning the lottery are based on the prior year’s win percentage, with the worst given the best odds. If teams have identical win percentages, the tiebreaker goes to the previous year’s record. The remaining 12 postseason teams will fill out the rest of the first round based on when they were eliminated in October and their revenue-sharing status.

With the club earning a top-six pick this year, however, it would benefit Chris Getz to start to turn things around as quickly as possible – even if the White Sox are the worst team in baseball next season, they cannot pick higher than 10th overall next season. So, there is no additional first-round draft benefit to be gained from being bad in 2024 – even though it means their draft picks in later rounds would be higher.