The Royals won the draft lottery.  This is the worst-case scenario.

After posting a franchise-worst record of 106 losses, the Royals have the “luxury” of picking 6th overall in the 2024 MLB Draft.  There are many problems with this.  First, the obvious: it’s four picks lower than what they “deserve” to pick; as in, the pick they should have gotten based on their record.  This isn’t exactly a great draft to pick 6th in, either, as the talent pool is already looking much less interesting than 2023’s.  That’s not to say the Royals can’t get a great player 6th overall—Scouting Director Brian Bridges noted that Zack Greinke was picked 6th overall many moons ago.  Recently, Jarred Kelenic, CJ Abrams and Jordan Lawler were picked 6th overall and later became top-10 prospects within MLB.  Royals fans love to remember the cursed draft of 2011 where they took Bubba Starling 5th overall—and the 6th pick was Anthony Rendon.  It’s entirely possible for the Royals to strike gold in the draft, but the likelihood drops off noticeably between #2 and #6.

KC scouting director Brian Bridges: "You have your hopes up for one. It didn’t work out. I wasn’t expecting six. I figured hopefully we would be in the top three. There’s a difference in the money. But Zack Greinke went six. There’s been some good players who were picked six."

— Anne Rogers (@anne__rogers) December 6, 2023

Then there’s an arguably bigger issue with dropping four spots: the money involved lessens.  Pool money won’t be announced for another few months, so we’ll go with last year’s for reference: Last year, the 2nd overall pick had a slot value of $8,998,500.  The 6th pick was valued at $6,634,000.  These slot values determine how much money a team gets to spend in the draft, so we can already assume the Royals will have at least $2M less than what they would’ve had if they picked second.  Even if the 2024 Draft won’t have a lot of high-end talent worth taking at #6, they could use their wealth of slot value to spread the money around to supposed lesser talents, getting better value out of lower picks.  But with less money available, this flexibility lessens as well.

Keep in mind that the Royals also have a bonus pick at the end of the first round for being one of the little guys.  They get it every even year, with odd years moving the pick between the second and third rounds.  Evidently, this pick moves down as well, likely putting the Royals’ bonus pick closer to #40 than to the originally-expected #35, and subtracting another $250k of slot value.  Even with a potentially thin draft class, it’s not a great year to move down if you have multiple first round picks.

The third reason is quite literally a nail in the coffin for the Royals: this could put them out of the running for the 2026 Draft.  Getting a top-6 pick through the lottery is considered a “win” in MLB’s book, and so if you “win” twice in a row, you’re excluded from the next lottery.  This means if the Royals get a top-6 pick in the 2025 Draft, they won’t be able to get one for the 2026 Draft.  You see the problem?  The Royals have been punished, not just by dropping four spots, but also because they dropped four spots.

Hilariously—and I would bet on this actually happening given our luck—the Royals can have the exact same scenario play out next year: they field a bottom-3 team and move down a couple or a few spots in the draft to #6, thus being ineligible for a top-6 pick in 2026 despite moving down the draft order three years in a row.

Normally, I would want my team to draft as high as possible, but getting to pick 6th in 2024 is actually worse than if they fell to 7th or even 8th.  (That was the lowest they could possibly drop, which was only possible if both the Royals and A’s weren’t picked for the top-6.)  This is a uniquely bad scenario: it likely rules out the possibility of the Royals selecting the draft’s top-shelf talent and also jeopardizes a future draft.  Picking 7th next year and having a shot at 1st in 2026 would have been much better than picking 6th next year and not having that shot at all.

If the Royals picked 5th, the overall problems would still remain but their placement would be marginally better.  If they picked 4th, they could still cross their fingers of an Asa Lacy situation occurring again—but hopefully with a better outcome than Asa Lacy.  If they picked 3rd, they can still be in the running for a top-top talent.  Picking 2nd would have met expectations.  Picking 1st would be a blessing and we’d celebrate.  If they fell to 7th or 8th, we could groan about dropping so many spots but at least get a mulligan, knowing they’d have a better chance at the next two drafts—two potentially better classes, at that.  Instead, 6th is the sweet spot of not having the best talent available and putting a huge risk at missing out on a future top pick.

I’m not posting this to complain about the rules or the system or even say the Royals deserve better—at the end of the day, they played the same game as everyone else.  Luck dictated this lottery and it wasn’t in our favor.  It is what it is and we have to live with it.  But, for so many things to have gone wrong with this team and this organization over not just 2023 but the past several years, this feels like getting kicked when we’re so down bad it makes Yamcha look comfortable.  Having one more thing go wrong that wasn’t in our control—if anything, the Royals did everything they could to control it in their favor by securing top odds—makes it hard to hold back the frustration.  This sucks.  We got screwed, and now it’s even harder to achieve future success.

Picollo: "It’s the system in place. There’s nothing we can do about it. There’s been a lot of good players taken in the top 10, so it’s not going to change the way we approach scouting. But the initial disappointment is there."

— Anne Rogers (@anne__rogers) December 6, 2023