Rockies slide in MLB Draft Lottery, get No. 4 pick in 2025

DALLAS — The Ping-Pong balls didn’t bounce the Rockies’ way on Tuesday.

Although the Rockies and the Miami Marlins had the best chance of winning Major League Baseball’s Draft Lottery, the baseball gods smiled on neither team. Colorado finished fourth in the lottery, and the Marlins fell to seventh.

The Rockies, who lost 101 games this past season, and the Marlins (100 losses), entered the lottery with the best chance of winning the top pick, with odds of 22.5%.

But the Washington Nationals (91 losses), who had the fourth-best chance (10.20%), won the lottery and landed the first overall pick in the 2025 draft.

“There’s going to be a good player there (at No. 4),” said Marc Gustafson, Colorado’s senior director of scouting operations. “We’ve done a lot of work, not only over the last few days. Our scouts and our (research and development) guys have done the work, and we’ve identified some good (players) up top. Now it’s time to sort it all out.

“This is a fun time for us. It’s not like we’re heartbroken. We’re excited to get after it.”

Clint Hurdle, the former Rockies manager who is now a special assistant to general manager Bill Schmidt, was the Rockies’ honorary representative during the MLB Network broadcast. He’ll surely face plenty of ribbing for Colorado’s fourth-place finish.

“I got nothing to say, boys,” Hurdle said with a laugh as he departed the giant ballroom at the Hilton Anatole Hotel.

Gustafson said the 2025 draft is loaded with talent, particularly college players.

“There is a lot of pitching depth in this draft,” he added.

Gustafson believes the lone high school player in the draft’s top five will be shortstop/third baseman Ethan Holliday, who attends Stillwater High School in Oklahoma. Holliday is the son of former Rockies All-Star outfielder Matt Holliday and the younger brother of Jackson, who was drafted first overall by Baltimore in 2022 and made his MLB debut in 2024.

The Rockies have never picked first in the draft. They had the second overall pick in 2006 and selected Stanford right-hander Greg Reynolds, who never became a successful big-league pitcher.

MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to the lottery as part of the current collective bargaining agreement in an effort to curb tanking. The lottery awards the top six picks. The 2025 draft is scheduled for July 13-15 in Atlanta during the All-Star break.

This past season, the White Sox lost a modern-record 121 games but were ineligible to receive the No. 1 selection through the lottery. That’s because they had the No. 5 pick in the 2024 draft, and teams that pay into revenue sharing cannot pick in the lottery in back-to-back years. Because the White Sox were ineligible, the Rockies and Marlins improved their chances to snare the No. 1 pick. They had the second- and third-worst records in baseball.

The Guardians won the lottery last offseason despite finishing with the league’s ninth-worst record. Cleveland took Oregon State infielder Travis Bazzana with the No. 1 selection. The Reds also won big when they moved up from No. 13 to No. 2 and picked Wake Forest right-hander Chase Burns.