With Mets having a lot riding on the 2024 MLB Draft Lottery, here's everything you need to know

Shohei Ohtani? Yoshinobu Yamamoto? Juan Soto? Those are going to be the big stories across the sport at the Winter Meetings. 

However, there's an event happening that will be very significant regarding the future of the Mets. That event is the MLB Draft Lottery, taking place on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m..

The 2023 MLB Draft was the first in the league’s history that had a lottery to determine the top picks. The Pittsburgh Pirates won that lottery and selected LSU right-hander Paul Skenes with the No. 1 overall pick. 

While the Mets' 2023 season went, well, not as expected, one of the "benefits" is that they will have a possibility to land one of the very top picks in the 2024 MLB Draft.

So, you’re saying there’s a chance? 

The Mets have the seventh-best odds (or a 4.3 percent chance) to end up with the No. 1 overall pick. As unique of an opportunity as that may be, the most important number for the Mets in the draft lottery is the number six.

Due to the Mets spending north of $40 million over the luxury tax threshold in 2023, their first pick in the 2024 draft will drop 10 slots if it falls outside of the top six selections after the lottery. 

The Mets' first pick being dropped 10 slots happened to them in the 2023 draft where they would have picked No. 22 overall. Instead, they picked No. 32 overall and selected high school shortstop Colin Houck. 

When you combine the odds for the Mets to pick somewhere in the top six, they have approximately a 42.3 percent chance to protect their first pick, per Tankathon. If they do land in the top six, their second selection would drop 10 slots instead.

I have had some people say to me: "Who cares? it’s maybe pick 17 instead of pick 6" or "The MLB Draft is a crapshoot anyway." 

I get it, but it matters for a multitude of reasons. The obvious one is that the Mets would rather have five or fewer players come off the board before they pick instead of 16 or more.

Where their first pick lands will also have a huge impact on the Mets' overall draft bonus pool.

Each pick in the top 10 rounds has a specific dollar slot value attached to it, and the sum of those is each team’s bonus pool. A team can shift those dollars around as they wish throughout the draft, and can even exceed their pool amount by up to 5 percent and only be penalized financially. Anything above 5 percent and teams will lose future first round pick(s).

Using the 2023 draft slot values as a guide: If the Mets were to land the No. 6 pick in the draft through the lottery, the slot value for that pick in 2023 was $6,634,000. If the Mets were to land the No. 7 pick through the lottery, that pick would drop down to No. 17, which had a slot value of $4,169,700 in 2023.

I am no math expert, so using a calculator that is a difference of $2,464,300, which is nearly the equivalent of the No. 34 overall pick’s slot value. The difference between having the 6^th pick or the 17^th pick is like adding the potential for an additional borderline first-round talent. That’s significant any way you slice it.

In a bit of a look ahead to the 2024 draft, talking to scouts in the game it is considered to be a fairly average draft class with strengths at what are generally considered non-premium positions. The class is will likely have teams leaning heavily toward college players, with the high school crop not being as strong to this point as it has been in years past.

Some of the top names to know are Wake Forest first baseman Nick Kurtz, West Virginia second baseman JJ Wetherholt, Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana, Florida first baseman/left-handed pitcher Jac Caglianone and a couple of right-handed pitchers in Wake Forest’s Chase Burns and Iowa’s Brody Brecht.

I will certainly be following all of these draft prospects in the spring. But on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., the Mets and the scouting staff now led by vice president of amateur scouting Kris Gross will find out from which tier they will be able to select in his first draft with the organization.