On Tuesday, Major League Baseball held its second annual Draft Lottery that featured surprising result at No. 1 overall.

The Cleveland Guardians, which came into the evening with a 2 percent chance at receiving the first overall pick, now hold the No. 1 spot. Even more surprising, the Cincinnati Reds, which held a 0.9 percent chance at the first pick, leap all the way to No. 2 overall despite finishing with a record above .500 – which is precisely the kind of allure MLB was surely looking to create with this Draft Lottery process.

Meanwhile, none of the three teams (Athletics, Royals, Rockies) who finished with the lowest winning percentages in baseball after the 2023 campaign wound up securing either of the first two picks. Instead, Colorado landed the No. 3 overall pick, the A's will have to settle for No. 4, while the Royals slipped to No. 6. The White Sox are sandwiched in between the A's and the Royals at No. 5 overall after earning a place in the lottery, though it comes with a different kind of price tag, as they won't be lottery eligible in 2025 due to revenue-sharing rules.

Check out where the Prep Baseball Draft HQ staff saw this '24 class once the curtain fell on the 2023 MLB Draft in July, in side this Draft HQ '24 Mock, First Look.

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So, with that, we've conducted our latest mock draft, which is now a version that features the concrete order of the first 30 picks. We published a mock draft after last year's first-ever lottery where we identified three of the first four players picked in 2023, albeit in a slightly different order (though we did connect on Dylan Crews' eventual destination in the draft). Eight of the players we estimated as top-10-picks back then ultimately did become top-10 selections, and the other two didn't make it past pick No. 17. In total, 20 of the prospects we tabbed for the first round at this time last year did go on to become first-round picks in the 2023 MLB Draft.

With that being said, the 2024 Draft is much cloudier than 2023's pool of prospective talent. There's a solid core of collegiate talent at the top, though it might be lacking some of the superstar qualities that followed the likes of the LSU duo Crews and Paul Skenes, as well as the star preps Max Clark and Walker Jenkins. And speaking of this prep class, it is similarly lacking the punch Clark and Jenkins already holstered at the start of 2023. It is also without a bonafide top right-handed prep arm, like the track record Noble Meyer laid en route to being the No. 11 pick last summer.

The road to the 2024 MLB Draft is in full swing following the late summer's key circuit that carried into the fall, which included the inaugural Prep Baseball All-American Game, and its Team 2024 roster was aced by the pitcher we thought might tempt the Rockies at No. 3 below.

See where Prep Baseball Draft HQ's thinking is directing us as we begin to unfold a 2024 Draft cycle that contains quite a bit of uncertainty, as it stands. Stay tuned for additional draft coverage over the next few weeks, as we attempt to tee up the circuit from igniting in earnest once these prospects reconvene near the start of 2024.

2024 MLB DRAFT: Second Look

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