MLB Draft lottery: Washington Nationals secure the first pick in 2025 draft, followed by Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners

DALLAS — The third-ever MLB Draft Lottery took place Tuesday at the winter meetings in Dallas, and the Washington Nationals were awarded the top overall selection in the 2025 MLB Draft, set to commence July 13 in Atlanta during All-Star Week. Introduced by MLB in 2022 as a mechanism to disincentivize teams from being noncompetitive in order to secure high draft picks and maximum bonus pools (aka tanking), the inherent randomness of the lottery has provided several surprising results during its brief existence, and this year’s edition was no different.

All non-postseason teams in 2024 were eligible to win the top overall pick, with two notable exceptions. The 93-loss A’s and the 121-loss White Sox were ineligible for slightly different but similar reasons. As a “payor” club — a team that pays revenue-sharing dollars rather than receiving them — the White Sox were unable to participate in the lottery after doing so last year, as payor clubs are not allowed to receive lottery picks in consecutive years. The A’s, meanwhile, are a “payee club” — one that receives revenue-sharing dollars — and those are ineligible to receive a lottery pick in three consecutive years, which would’ve been the case after the A’s had lottery picks in 2023 and 2024.

That left 16 teams with a chance of winning the top overall pick, led by Miami and Colorado, each of which had a 22.45% chance of claiming the first selection. Neither the Marlins nor the Rockies ended up winning the lottery, with Miami dropping all the way to the seventh pick and Colorado slotting in at No. 4. Instead, it was the Nationals, who entered the lottery with a 10.2% chance of winning the first overall pick — the fourth-best odds of any team — who jumped all the way up, followed by the Angels (17.96% odds of No. 1) sliding in at No. 2.

The Nationals weren’t the only team that benefitted brilliantly from the luck of the lottery. The 85-win Mariners, who had just a 0.5% chance of winning the top pick, vaulted all the way up to No. 3, presenting Seattle a massive opportunity to add more top-end talent to a farm system already considered one of the game’s best.

St. Louis also took a sizable jump up the board, as the Cards landed a top-five pick after an 83-win season that had their lottery odds suggesting a far less fruitful draft slot. This is a rather remarkable turn of events for the Cardinals after they picked seventh in 2024 following a stunningly dismal 2023 campaign. That marked the franchise’s highest first-round pick since they chose fifth in 1998, and now here they are picking even higher just a year later.

The boon for Seattle and St. Louis in particular is not just that they’ll pick earlier than expected but also that those picks come with a significantly larger amount of bonus pool money than if they selected in the 13-15 range. For example, the third overall pick in the 2024 draft came with a slot of roughly $9 million, while the 15th pick came with a slot of approximately $4.9M. Having an additional $3-4 million to work with will afford the Mariners and Cardinals flexibility to allocate their funds in far more creative ways, which is a huge deal for scouting departments under the current system.

Washington’s lottery wasn’t quite the miraculous leap to the top of the draft board that Cleveland made a year ago, when the Guardians won the top pick despite just a 2% chance of doing so, but it’s a favorable outcome for a franchise that did not have fortune on its side in the first two editions of the draft lottery.

The Nationals lost 107 games in 2022, more than any other team in MLB. For decades, that would’ve ensured them the top pick in the draft — which in 2023 meant the chance to select pitching phenom Paul Skenes. But with the introduction of the lottery, Washington landed the second pick and chose outfielder Dylan Crews after Skenes went to Pittsburgh at No. 1. Crews certainly looks like a promising building block for Washington, but the what-if of landing Skenes is an intriguing sliding doors moment.

In 2023, the Nationals finished with the fifth-worst record in baseball but were ineligible for the lottery for the same reason the White Sox were this year; as a “payor club,” they could not be in the lottery in consecutive years.

That wound up being a significant detail. Washington's ping-pong ball combinations were left on the board, with the understanding that they would be negated if they came up — and they indeed came up. The Nationals "won" the first pick, which was nullified, then "won" the second pick as well, again nullified. They picked 10th in the 2024 draft instead.

This year, luck was again on the Nationals’ side, as well as circumstance. And now they have an opportunity to add another elite talent at a crucial point in the team’s lengthy rebuild — an opportunity with which the franchise is intimately familiar. Washington’s selections of Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper in 2009 and 2010 are two of the more successful first overall picks in MLB history, and they helped define the next decade of Nationals baseball. Now Washington will have another opportunity to pick at the very top, though as of now there isn’t a no-doubt, generational talent atop the 2025 class.

Who might be the top players drafted in 2025?

That’s not to say there aren’t some exciting prospects to monitor. Ethan Holliday — son of seven-time All-Star Matt and younger brother of Orioles infielder Jackson — is the name to know among prep players. Holliday is much larger than his brother was when he too was a star infielder with a sweet lefty swing playing high school ball in Oklahoma, meaning he projects for more power down the road but also less likelihood of staying at an up-the-middle position. He could be a monster at third base, though.

Eli Willits, son of former big-league outfielder Reggie, is another high school infielder in Oklahoma who could be in play in the top 10 picks, and he will be one of the youngest players available after reclassifying from the 2026 class. Beyond Holliday and Willits, Seth Hernandez, a right-handed pitcher from California, and Xavier Neyens, a third baseman from Washington, are two other prep players to keep an eye on.

Among college players, Texas A&M OF Jace LaViolette has massive raw power and has been an offensive force in the SEC through his first two seasons as an Aggie. On the pitching side, UC Santa Barbara right-hander Tyler Bremner and Florida State southpaw Jamie Arnold are the two consensus best arms for teams seeking frontline starting pitching at the top of the draft.

So much can and will change between now and then, but the lottery is the first vital step toward these players — and so many others — realizing their big-league dreams. There’s a full spring season ahead for thousands of college and high school players hoping to raise their stocks enough to hear their names called next July.

The Nationals will be on the clock before you know it.

Here are the full draft lottery results:

1. Washington Nationals
2. Los Angeles Angels
3. Seattle Mariners
4. Colorado Rockies
5. St. Louis Cardinals
6. Pittsburgh Pirates
7. Miami Marlins
8. Toronto Blue Jays
9. Cincinnati Reds
10. Chicago White Sox
11. Athletics
12. Texas Rangers
13. San Francisco Giants
14. Tampa Bay Rays
15. Boston Red Sox
16. Minnesota Twins
17. Chicago Cubs
18. Arizona Diamondbacks