Texas Rangers 2022 Draft Lottery Preview

The inaugural MLB Draft lottery will take place this Tuesday night during the Winter Meetings. This was one of the issues agreed upon in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The lottery is meant to discourage teams from prolonged tanking. So to let you know how this will work, the top 6 picks will be drawn at random. The 18 teams who did not make the playoffs will be the participants. The Texas Rangers are one of those teams.

Teams that had the 3 worst record have the highest percentage chance at 16.5% of getting the top pick. The Rangers at a 68-94 record have the seventh best odds of getting the number one pick at 5.5%

The lottery will air at 7:30pm Central Standard Time on MLB Network. I expect that it will be similar to the NBA lottery where each team sends a representative to be in the room where the results are revealed. In the NBA teams will often times send an executive, celebrity fan of the team, an active player, or a former player to sit in the room. I would imagine Texas will send Chris Young or maybe Michael Young to be their representative. That has not been revealed yet.

Texas Rangers 2022 Draft Lottery preview

For Ranger fans they might want to tune in to this one. The Rangers after finishing 68-94 in 2022 are one of the participants in the lottery. It will hopefully be a long time before they are in this position again. So where could the Rangers end up picking in the draft? If everything goes chalk then they will be picking seventh. They also could fall back in the lottery order to as low as 13 or pick as high as one. It all depends on the ping pong balls and how they are drawn.

The Texas Rangers have already gotten the big prize of the off-season in signing Jacob DeGrom to a 5-year contract. If they can somehow get a top-three pick as well in the lottery that would be icing on the cake. This team is loaded in pitching prospects. The Rangers can probably go 10-15 quality pitchers deep in their farm system. They are still lacking a difference-making batter such as a Julio Rodriguez or Bobby Witt Jr. Josh Jung though is expected to be the Opening Day starter at third base. Right now on the farm that distinction goes to Evan Carter,Aaron Zavala, or Luisangel Acuna. None of whom will likely see time in Arlington in 2023.

We still have a long ways until the July draft, so it is hard to truly know who the top prospects will be. That will become clearer once high school and college seasons get underway next Spring. The draft lottery setting the top of the draft order will help inform front offices how to approach this draft and who to be scouting.Just a reminder though unlike other sports these picks are not able to be traded. I wish MLB and the players could agree on some system where that is allowed. That would inject some excitement into the draft itself and allow teams to include their picks during the trade deadline. That will not be happening though any time soon.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Texas Rangers are a revenue sharing team and if they do receive a top-six pick, will not be eligible for a lottery pick in next year’s draft. That was one of the stipulations to keep teams from tanking for multiple seasons. Large market teams that do share revenue cannot receive a lottery pick in consecutive seasons. Teams that receive the revenue sharing cannot get a lottery pick in three consecutive seasons. That is hopefully to keep teams from going into a multi year tanking process like what the Astros and Cubs did in the last decade and what the Orioles did until 2022.

As with everything in the winter meetings this week fans should be watching. The lottery will be a fun event this week in San Diego. They will likely reveal the teams from 18-1. When we get to pick 13 that is the range for where the Rangers pick can be. If they go anywhere from 8-13 they have fell. If we get to pick seven and they still haven’t been revealed then they have rose in the draft. It will be interesting to see what if any impact this has on the proceedings as a whole this week. If a large market team like the Cubs gets a lottery pick they might be more likely to go for it in 2022 knowing that they can’t be in the lottery again next season.

The intended impact of the lottery was to discourage tanking. With the lottery being in the middle of the Winter Meetings it could spur teams to be more active in the last two days of meetings. Large market teams that receive a top six pick will know that tanking for a lottery pick will not be an option for them. The lottery will take take place Tuesday night at 7:30pm CST and will be broadcast on MLB Network and simulcast on MLB.com.