Angels' losing ways give the team no chance for draft lottery luck this time around

During the 2024 MLB draft lottery, no rational Angels fan expected their favorite team to have any luck. Between constant injuries to key players, whiffs in free agency and an incredible amount of off-field drama, the Angels are clearly one of the unluckiest franchises in a sport that requires an incredible amount of luck to win games. The newly implemented lottery system, to try and eradicate tanking, added yet another layer of luck that normally always did not go the Angels' way.

Well, the baseball gods smiled on the Angels that day. The Angels had the third shortest odds to land the no. 1 overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, and they somehow stood strong and moved up to no. 2. Now, they might have squandered that luck by selecting Tyler Bremner (who MLB.com had listed as their 18th best prospect), but that's besides the point.

For more reasons than one, the 2025 Angels simply had to succeed. One of the most important reasons was that if they finished in the bottom-10 of the standings yet again, they would be ineligible to draft in the top-10 of the 2026 MLB Draft.

Angels' losing ways give the team no chance for draft lottery luck this time around

While they operate like a mid-market organization, the Arte Moreno-led Angels are, in fact, a big market team. They are valued higher than teams like the St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays (per Forbes) and MLB's collective bargaining agreement has a cap on the amount of times big market teams can make selections in the top-10 of drafts.

Case and point: The 2024 Chicago White Sox. The White Sox were one of the worst teams in the history of baseball in 2024, but had to select 11th in the 2025 draft because they are a big market team. The same thing will happen to the Angels next year.

The Angels finished the 2025 season with the sixth worst record in baseball, but cannot pick higher than 11th in the 2026 MLB Draft. That's not terrible in of itself -- the Angels did select Nolan Schanuel 11th in the 2023 MLB Draft, and he is a cornerstone of the franchise (at least, they hope he is). The fact of the matter is that the Angels just cannot get out of their own way. They shoot themselves in the foot every year, and this one is no different.

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