The MLB Draft Lottery Has Been Unkind to the Cubs—But They've Also Been Unkind to Themselves

[Matthew Trueblood]

Resist the temptation to rage against the universe after an NL Central team soared up into the top five for the second year in a row, while the Cubs once again stayed right in the middle of the first round. It's bad luck, but that bad luck is the residue of the team's lousy designs.

Image courtesy of © Tim Heitman-Imagn Images

The third-ever MLB Draft Lottery was held Tuesday afternoon in Dallas, and the Cubs got no help, again. For the third year in a row, they were in the mix to slide up and claim a lottery pick, but instead, they'll end up drafting 17th, after picking 13th in 2023 and 14th in 2024. Meanwhile, after the Reds caught a huge break and landed the second overall pick via the lottery last year (despite similar odds to do so to the Cubs'), the archrival Cardinals landed the fifth pick this time around, despite identical odds to the Cubs'.

In short, three years in, this system has done nothing to change the Cubs' expected fortunes, except sliding them back a slot or two each year. Meanwhile, two divisional foes have gotten access to elite talent. It's a bummer, even if it's ludicrous to imagine that the process is somehow fixed or unfair. It's bad luck, but that bad luck sure feels cruel.

Don't feel bad for the Cubs, though. This is their own fault—not only because they haven't built a team good enough to reach the postseason since 2018, but because they keep proving that they're capable of doing so, but don't take a sufficient interest in doing so until after the season gets going.

In 2022, the Cubs hit the halfway point on pace for 66 wins. They won 74. In 2023, they were on pace for 76 halfway into the campaign, but ended up winning 83, and this season, they got to the same final number from an 81-game pace for 74. It's a good thing when your team wins games, and we shouldn't be in the business of chiding the team for winning more in the second halves of those campaigns, but doing so cost them draft position. It's not as clear—it's not guaranteed, like it used to be—but the team's odds to get high picks would have been far better if they hadn't played winning baseball in all those second halves. They've probably cost themselves about $2 million in spending power over the last three years by coming on strong after sluggish, sloppy starts that betray poor offseason roster construction—all of which might be tolerable, except that in none of those seasons have they ultimately been good enough to reach the postseason.

The lesson Jed Hoyer and company should take from that is simple: they need to get aggressive, right now, rather than wait around and rebuild their bullpen on the fly next Memorial Day weekend. They need to enter the season with a 90-win projection, the way Craig Counsell demanded that they do, rather than hedge and hope. And if they don't do so, but rather flop out of the gate and seem headed for another 90-loss season at the midpoint of 2025, Hoyer should be fired, and the team should sell aggressively at the trade deadline, the better to avoid repeating the pattern of self-defeating victories late in lost seasons.

There's a little bit of random chance in the distribution of wins throughout a season, of course. Even so, it's clear that the Cubs are spending too much of the first half of each season figuring out how best to align and adjust their roster in order to field a winner. They need to do that work now, in December and January, even though trying to do so comes with some added risks. Otherwise, they might end up attending another lottery next December, with similarly lousy odds to acquire game-changing talent.

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