The MLB Draft lottery was added into the equation for the MLB Draft in the last collective bargaining agreement. Its goal was to help the league avoid organizations tanking to land high draft picks year in and year out, as well as add parity to the event.
Major League Baseball did, indeed, have something of a tanking problem. Small market teams were refusing to spend money in the hopes they'd land a generational player at the top of one of the impending drafts. The league wanted to encourage these small markets organizations to increase their spending. Thus, the penalization of picking at the top of the draft in consecutive years was born.
Starting with the 2022 season, organizations that receive collective bargain tax revenue payouts were no longer eligible to pick inside of the top-six picks more than two years in a row. Conversely, collective bargaining tax payors were not …