By now, I think everyone is aware that there is a MLB draft lottery tonight and the Braves are involved. Everyone is probably aware that the Braves have the sixth-best odds of getting the highest pick. What I needed to look up was how the draft actually occurred. That is, once the odds were determined, how do they pick the teams? My only memories of a draft lottery were from decade plus ago and those were the NBA ones. If I remember correctly, the draw took place behind closed doors and the televised
portion was just cards being released, Vanna White style. Sorry, but my team has been in the playoffs since a draft lottery began in MLB, so I had really no reason to pay attention before.
The MLB Draft Lottery (apparently) works like this. The chances to win are awarded non-playoff teams inversely by their win-loss record. The worse you were, the better your odds. Based on your probability of winning, you are awarded that percentage of a series of 4 numbers from 1 to 14. The worse you were, the more virtual lottery tickets that you are awarded, as long as you hadn’t appeared in the draft lottery too often. Matt laid all this out yesterday as well. So in 2023, the Guardians won the first pick in the 2024 Draft when 3-9-11-13 was drawn. Supposedly that number would have belonged to the Nationals, but they were ineligible. Five more draws are completed to get the next six picks, and the rest of the picks are assigned by won-loss, after moving the ineligible teams to at least tenth place. Clear as mud?
This broke Ivan’s integrated circuit and stole his soul once we discovered what they did. (Just round it to the nearest percent and put 100 balls in the spinny thing, you absolute goobers!) But, whatever MLB wants to do, I guess. The televised version has the teams presented with a series of cards. We aren’t privy to the details of drawing the ping pong balls, checking which team owned that sequence, and drawing again for any duplicates. But I guess it’s random enough, and, you just have to hope that they’re actually doing it correctly. (Like quality control on the baseballs! And ball-strike calls! And what can and can’t be replay-reviewed!) Therefore, we present the Battery Power Mock 2026 MLB Draft with a less optimized math structure and more entertainment. I mean, that ought to appeal to the audience MLB is seeking out anyway.
Rules
I have more ball pit balls than I know what to do with. They’re left over from when our child was a toddler. They sometimes serve as pool toys as well. I am provisioning a set of ball pit balls and other balls to each team. Then I am going to spread these out in a portion of my yard. Then I’m going to have my kid fire Nerf darts into the area where the balls lie. The team’s ball where the tip of the dart is closest gets the pick. Once a team has a pick, their balls are removed and the process is repeated five more times. Then the remaining teams are assigned picks afterward.
Now I don’t have 10,000 balls to make the math work out completely. It just feels like it. But then MLB’s math isn’t optimized either, per Ivan (because the percentages are insanely specific, yet they’re still drawing balls with sequences somehow. I bet they don’t have a big enough ball spinny thing for it to work.). So, I have assigned color and types of balls accordingly as laid out below. The lack of balls affects the probabilities, but it’s pretty close. The teams with the fewest balls have their odds warped the most. For example, the Mets have twice the MLB assigned odds as the Astros, yet each get one ball. I made up for this by giving the Mets a larger ball and the Astros a smaller one. The same happened with the Rangers and Giants.
Now, you’re 600+ words into this. Yes, this is dumb. This is also no more stupid than the idea of a draft lottery. And, it’s probably less stupid, and more fun for at least one child, than the way MLB is actually doing their draft picks, and then televising the excruciating ordeal for whatever reason. Maybe Rob Manfred should consider not incentivizing teams for playing like hot garbage for a decade plus. Or maybe revisit the corporate welfare provided to smaller market teams.
The NBA draft lottery makes sense because one single player can completely change the course of a franchise. That rarely happens in baseball. It took both Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper to help push the Nationals into contention. But then it was a steep drop after the World Series.
This mock draft lottery also gave me a chance to teach my school-age daughter about math and probability. And we had a good time setting this up. So, it’s a win before the draft order became crystallized.
Results
Here are all of the balls spread out. I tried to keep these in one spot and somewhat randomized.
My kid fired pink and purple darts from the Blastercorn. She stood 40-70 feet away shooting darts in the general direction of the balls. If you’re concerned about the randomness of these events, it took her about 30 shots to get six of these anywhere near the balls. So let’s examine the results.
The first pick of the 2026 MLB Draft goes to the yellow ball of the Chicago White Sox.
For the second pick, the smaller, darker blue ball of the Atlanta Braves.
For the third pick, the blue foam ball of the New York Mets.
For the fourth pick, the purple ball of the Tampa Rays.
For the fifth pick, the tennis ball of the San Francisco Giants.
For the sixth pick, the light green ball of the Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas Athletics.
The Mock 2026 MLB Draft order for the non-playoff teams is:
- White Sox
- Braves
- Mets
- Rays
- Giants
- Athletics
- Twins
- Pirates
- Orioles
- Rockies
- Nationals
- Angels
- Cardinals
- Marlins
- Dbacks
- Rangers
- Royals
- Astros
There were two low odds teams improving their chances here. The Mets and Giants really improved their chances here. The Braves are picking second. This would work out okay with me. Here’s hoping for a similar result tonight.
