𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

With their win in Miami on Tuesday night, the Mets improved to an impressive 20-12 since the trade deadline. (It’s clear now: New York’s best-performing players were actually what was holding the team back.) Only the Rays and Phillies have been better in all of baseball.

How much is that competitive surge costing the Mets in draft capital?

New York sits in an unusual spot when it comes to next summer’s draft. It can be eliminated from the postseason picture as early as this weekend. But because it has surpassed the final threshold of the luxury tax, its first-round selection next summer will drop 10 spots — unless that pick is within the top six of the draft.

On the field, the Mets are obviously not paying this much attention. They’re playing as well as they have all season, and interim manager Andy Green has consistently cited the primacy of winning games when discussing his decisions.

The Mets enter Wednesday with the eighth-worst record in the sport; they passed the Tigers and Nationals on Tuesday alone.

Let’s explore the strange dynamics of MLB’s relatively novel draft lottery, and what it means for the Mets. The website whose NFL tab everyone in New York will probably glance at by October, Tankathon, is very helpful in this analysis.

How does the draft lottery work?

Similar to how we’ve long grown used to it working in the NBA. The teams that do not qualify for the postseason all have a chance to win the No. 1 pick, unless there’s a caveat (see next section). In a normal year, the worst three teams have 16.5 percent chances of getting the top pick; the six teams with the best records outside the postseason all have less than a 1 percent chance of the top pick.

The lottery doesn’t just draw for No. 1, however. It draws for the top six spots. The three worst teams all have chances above 80 percent to stick in the top six.

How do the Giants and Pirates help the Mets?

Every team in the draft lottery will actually have higher odds than normal because two teams — the San Francisco Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates — cannot draft in the top 10 this season. (San Francisco cannot draft in the top 10 for a second consecutive year as a team that does not receive revenue sharing. Pittsburgh cannot draft in the top 10 a third consecutive year as a team that does receive revenue sharing.)

The Giants make this especially meaningful for the Mets; they are one of the few teams worse than New York, and so removing their odds and parceling them out to the other teams in the lottery helps substantially.

How tight is it for the Mets?

Here’s how the odds of a top-six pick are distributed this year, baking in the Giants’ penalties and removing them from consideration, meaning the Mets currently sit at No. 7 here.

This is clearly where individual games could move the odds a lot: The Mets’ chances of a top-six pick dropped by almost 24 percentage points on Tuesday alone.

How do tiebreakers work?

The Mets are tightly enmeshed with the Tigers, Nationals, Mariners and Twins right now. The tiebreaker for lottery odds has nothing to do with head-to-head or anything that happened on the field this season. It is simply your record from last year. The worse it was in 2025, the better for your odds this time around.

So in the event of a tie, New York would get better lottery odds than Seattle or Detroit, but worse ones than Washington or Minnesota.

Historically, what is the difference between the sixth pick and the 17th pick?

Sometimes it’s the gap between Barry Bonds and Brian McRae, or between Derek Jeter and Jim Pittsley. Other times, you pick Jaime Jones sixth and watch Roy Halladay make the Hall of Fame at No. 17.

On a median basis, the difference is negligible. The median value of a No. 6 pick is zero wins above replacement — same as for the No. 17 pick. In 28 drafts, the No. 6 pick ultimately outperformed No. 17; in 25 drafts, it went the other way.

Broadly speaking, though, the sixth pick has been worth nearly twice as many wins above replacement (according to Baseball-Reference) than the 17th pick. A lot of that is accounted for by Bonds: Remove that 1985 draft alone from the list, and the sixth pick is only worth about 50 percent more.

Here’s how it breaks down at different thresholds of productivity:

It’s really in the high-end outcomes where it starts to separate. Bonds, Zack Greinke, Jeter and Gary Sheffield were all worth at least 60 wins above replacement; only Halladay reached that mark for No. 17 picks, with Cole Hamels falling just shy. The eighth-best No. 6 pick was Kevin McReynolds with more than 30 WAR — nearly double what the eighth-best No. 17 pick, Tim Anderson, produced.

The historical value of a pick is not linear. No. 5 picks have fared worse than No. 6 picks; the best No. 5 pick, Dwight Gooden, accumulated less WAR than Halladay or Hamels from No. 17. The best No. 19 pick, Roger Clemens, is in the same league as Bonds.

Financially speaking, it’s not just the player you can take at No. 6. That pick also comes with significantly more money (close to $3 million in 2026) for a team’s draft bonus pool.

This is not the September scoreboard-watching the Mets planned on entering the season. Such is life for one of baseball’s most disappointing teams in 2026. There could, however, be some value from that disappointment.