White Sox land the 5th overall pick in the MLB Draft Lottery

While all of the rumors are swirling at the Winter Meetings (including a fair bit fo chatter involving the Chicago White Sox), one piece of important business that also had to be done was the MLB Draft Lottery which took place on Tuesday evening. The draft lottery was put in place during the most recent CBA negotiations in an attempt to prevent teams from tanking to gain better draft position. It hasn't really helped because most of the same teams that have been bad have remained bad, but it was a decent step in the right direction.

The lottery went off the rails pretty quickly as all three teams with the best odds to get the first overall pick (Oakland, Kansas City, and Rockies) ended up with slots outside the top two picks. The Reds, who had just a 0.9% chance at the top pick, ended up at #2 while the Guardians, with a slim 2% chance, ended up with the 1st overall pick in the 2024 draft.

As for the White Sox, they had the fourth best odds in the draft lottery and ended up with the 5th overall pick.

The White Sox land the 5th overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft

Given the odds going into the evening, Chicago only did slightly worse than expected and are still picking in the top 5 for the third time since 2018. The White Sox picked Nick Madrigal with the fourth overall pick back in 2018 and landed Andrew Vaughn third overall in the 2019 draft.

It was a pretty big night for the AL Central as a whole as the Guardians snuck in and grabbed the top draft pick against all odds and the Royals slid a bit, but will still pick in the top 6 picks. It is still way too early to tell if the 2024 draft class is particularly good or deep, but this is where all of the draft speculation starts so strap in and enjoy the ride.

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