Royals Lose the Lottery (Again)

The system doesn’t help the Royals for the second straight year.

We didn’t even have to wait for them to reveal the Powerball to know the Royals had a losing ticket. Armed with the best odds to take the top overall pick in the 2024 draft, we watched the way-too-drawn-our draft lottery show in anticipation of where the Royals might pick. We knew it couldn’t be any lower than eighth, but the hope was obviously much higher than that.

When they went to a break before announcing the selections considered to be in the lottery, the top six, I just knew we’d hear the Royals called with that sixth pick. And sure enough, Brad Paisley turned over that card and revealed the Royals logo. Personally, I felt irrational anger for a few minutes and then was just annoyed for way longer than I should admit.

If you aren’t sure how the lottery works for the draft, the lottery is only for the first round. The Royals will pick second in rounds 2-20. But by dropping from the second spot where their record indicates they should pick to the sixth, they don’t just pick four picks later; they lose draft slot money. The amounts haven’t yet been announced, but last year, the difference between the second pick and the sixth pick was $2,364,500. That’s a massive amount of money.

It’s not that they can’t still draft a great player sixth overall. They’ve actually done that before with Zack reinke. It’s that this is the second straight year the lottery has hurt the Royals. Additionally, sixth is the worst spot to be in as that’s the final lottery spot and the Royals can only draft in the lottery three straight years. I’m less concerned over this because they can still draft there in 2025 and if they’re worried about that in 2026, they’re in even more trouble than they are now by still being that bad.

What I’m most enraged by here is not even their draft position but who is in front of them. One spot ahead of the Royals is the White Sox. And all the way at the top is the Cleveland Guardians, who went 76-86, 20 games better than our boys in blue. This is now the second straight year that the Royals have finished in last place in the AL Central and picked behind two division foes.

The Guardians getting the first pick (and the 82-80 Reds at number two) is just bonkers to me. I don’t think the draft is rigged, though the league that knowingly alters the baseball without telling anyone shouldn’t be above eyebrow raises, but this all just seems like a poor structure has been exposed and it’s hurt our favorite team more than any other.

I do think the lottery is a good idea. Tanking sucks. I wrote that I was happy the Orioles lost in the playoffs this year because I hate what they did to their fans. I hate the idea of purposely putting a subpar product on the field and asking people to support it. So I’m fine with efforts to curb that. And I suppose a bad team picking eighth and sixth in consecutive years when they were the fifth and second-worst team respectively is a message that you can’t just stink forever. But the point of the draft is also to help create parity and that’s difficult when multiple better teams in a team’s own division continue to pick higher than them.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s reasonable to say that division foes shouldn’t be able to pick above teams they were better than the year before. I’m fine with the rules to only be able to pick in the lottery twice before you’re relegated to outside it, but there’s just something that rubs me the wrong way about how this all unfolded. Would I care if this happened to the A’s? I think I would, though not as much. They actually have had a similar fate, picking sixth last year and fourth this year with the best odds for the top pick both seasons. The difference is that they’ve only had one division foe pick ahead of them in both seasons of the lottery. The more I write, the more I realize that’s the part that is making me angry.

I saw a lot of responses that it doesn’t matter because the Royals will screw it up regardless. Far be it from me to tell anyone how to be a fan, and I understand the reasoning behind that thought, but that’s just sad to me. I don’t know if this is from me maturing or not having the time to harbor sports anger like I used to, but you’ve probably figured out that I struggle a whole lot with complaining about things that haven’t happened yet.

At the 2022 trade deadline, people were livid that the Royals didn’t trade Whit Merrifield. Then they traded Merrifield. Last year, it was Scott Barlow. Then he was traded. I remember being 100 percent sure Dayton Moore was going to be let go in 2022. Many people were frustrated that he wasn’t. But then he was. Focusing on a poor draft history is different than that, but I just can’t find the emotional space to be angry about something that hasn’t happened. That’s just a pet peeve of mine, but if I can’t share it here, where can I share it?

Meanwhile, the meetings themselves have been a dud for news. Remember on Friday when I mentioned that only seven of the 50 listed on the MLB Trade Rumors prediction list had signed? At least as of this morning, that number remained seven. I can’t remember a Winter Meetings that featured this little action. Is this all because of teams waiting on Shohei Ohtani? My first thought is that it can’t be because there are only a handful of teams who even have a shot to sign him. But then I thought that yeah, he’s a part of holding everything up. That’s not me (or others) blaming him as much as just recognizing that his free agency is causing a logjam.

The other part is that it’s a weak free agent class. Take the Dodgers, for example. They’re obviously heavily in on Ohtani. But if he doesn’t sign there, they might pivot to JD Martinez and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. So Martinez waits. Maybe the Diamondbacks are interested in Martinez, but Martinez wants to wait until he knows the Dodgers are out on him. In that instance, maybe Teoscar Hernandez is the Diamondbacks second choice, so he has to wait. Mitch Garver is next in line and you get the idea. It’s just been beyond slow.

It did seem like the dam might be breaking a little last night when the Yankees traded for Alex Verdugo. From a Royals perspective, I saw some questions about whether or not the Royals should have been in on that. The return for Verdugo was Richard Fitts, Greg Weissert and Nicholas Judice. Weissert is older and has some big league experience. Fitts ranked 12th on the Yankees top prospects and is now 10th with the Red Sox on MLB.com. Judice was an eighth-round pick who hasn’t debuted yet. What’s the equivalent for the Royals?

I’d say it’s Chandler Champlain or Mason Barnett along with Logan Martin and, I don’t know, Austin Cox? There isn’t a true one-for-one for each of the players. But I think I’d have absolutely hated that deal from the Royals perspective for a player like Verdugo, who is really more fine than anything else and only under team control for one more season. My takeaway was that I had concocted a deal to send MJ Melendez to the Yankees and Fitts was part of that deal. So I’m actually looking at it and wondering if the Royals should have tried to be the Red Sox in this trade. Now that’s a maybe from me. Grab Fitts and someone like Clarke Schmidt and feel better about 2024 and beyond. It could still potentially happen, but I definitely don’t think I care about them not being in on Verdugo.

Otherwise, there is still one full day left of the meetings for things to start moving. There were a few big league deals that went down toward the end of the day yesterday, so maybe there will be a flurry. I guess we’ll see. The Rule 5 draft is today at 1 central and the Royals currently still have a full 40-man roster. I think this is a pretty unpopular comment, but I don’t have a huge issue if the Royals don’t make a pick. I think they should, but as I’ve written before, the Rule 5 is inherently a draft featuring players teams deemed not good enough to protect on their 40-man roster.

While it is true that the Royals have more dead weight than most on theirs and could easily clear a spot to keep someone, I think it’s a minor annoyance at most to me. Yes, it’s essentially free talent and there are some interesting players who the Royals shouldn’t have someone like Collin Snider standing in the way of drafting, but it’s such a high risk that if they don’t make a pick, I really think that’s okay too. Again, I’d like them to take that shot, but I don’t think it’s any indictment if they don’t. Just like I don’t think it’s an indictment that they haven’t done much this winter.

I do want to touch on one more thing from yesterday regarding JJ Picollo’s comments that they have $30 million to spend this winter. First, he did say they could go over that if the words he speaks matter to you. But second, as I noted on whatever the hell that social media site is called now, what happens if he says they have $50 million to spend and they only spend $30 million? People are up in arms and rightfully so. Now what happens if he says they have $30 million to spend and he spends $50 million? He’s praised. I’m not saying they’re going to spend $50 million, but in the rare instances that a team announces what they have to spend, take that as a minimum number, not a maximum.

Now let’s all get back to refreshing every seven seconds to see if anyone does anything during these meetings.