Royals elated to land No. 6 pick via Draft Lottery

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Rumors may have been flying, but there wasn’t a whole lot of momentum or movement surrounding offseason transactions for the Royals on Tuesday at the Winter Meetings. But buzz picked up quite a bit when the 2026 MLB Draft Lottery results were announced.

For the first time, the Royals were big winners in the lottery system: They were awarded the No. 6 pick in the 2026 MLB Draft.

Kansas City entered the day with 13th-best odds at landing the No. 1 pick -- a 0.8% chance. If the Royals hadn’t gotten a lottery pick, they would have picked 16th; non-lottery picks are determined by inverse order of the teams’ regular-season records, and there were three teams (the Angels, Rockies and Nationals) that weren’t eligible for the lottery this year.

Whichever way you look at it, the Royals made a big jump.

“It’s awesome,” general manager J.J. Picollo said. “It’s exciting. We had less than a 1% chance of getting the first pick, and we probably should have been closer to [No.] 16 -- so to get the sixth pick, you feel like there’s a little vindication. We dropped in previous years. We were so disappointed a couple of years there with how much we fell with good chances, high percentages, to get the first pick and we tumbled. To hit a year where we had good fortune, that’s exciting for us. It’s a great opportunity for the scouting department. Excited to see what we can do with that pick.”

Picollo was calling back to previous years when the Royals were in the lottery and slid down the order. In 2022, the inaugural Draft lottery, the Royals fell from No. 5 to No. 8, which they used to select No. 2 prospect Blake Mitchell in ‘23. That was the year in which the Royals had the second-worst record in baseball and tied for the best odds for the No. 1 pick in the 2024 Draft.

Instead, they slid to No. 6. They used that pick to select outfielder Jac Caglianone, so they were still pretty happy with how that Draft turned out. But in the moment, there was disappointment.

Last offseason, the Royals weren’t a lottery-eligible team because they made the playoffs; they selected infielder Sean Gamble at No. 23 and third baseman Josh Hammond at No. 28 this past season.

Now in 2026, scouting director Brian Bridges gets to make a much higher pick in the first round. The Royals have selected sixth two other times in their history, including Zack Greinke in 2002 and Caglianone in ‘24.

“The higher you are, the better player -- theoretically -- you should get,” Picollo said. “There’s other meaning to that pick, too, because there’s finances attached to that pick. You’re picking sixth instead of 12th or 13th or whatever, it’s a pretty significant difference. Those slots drop considerably from one to 10. If you’re sixth, in this case, you’re in a much better spot.

“We try to take the best player available, that’s the best way to go about a Draft. But it does give you some flexibility to think about how you want to run your whole Draft, how you can use that more effectively and get a deeper Draft.”

With the Draft Lottery completed, the Draft order is set. In addition to No. 6, the Royals will also have a Competitive Balance A pick next year at No. 30. The 2026 Draft will be held July 12 in Philadelphia as part of All-Star festivities, and the White Sox will be making the No. 1 overall pick.

Around the horn

• The Royals are linked to a number of teams and free agents, but there’s not a ton of movement toward something happening as of Tuesday evening. The free agent outfielders the Royals are targeting don’t have a deadline for signing and are still feeling out the market. Trade ideas are being swapped, so traction could come at any point.

  “It was a typical day just calling teams, talking to teams, talking to free agents, meeting with agents,” Picollo said. “Nothing different than yesterday. It’s kind of the same story.”

• Royals closer Carlos Estevez made an appearance at the Winter Meetings on Tuesday, as he lives close by in Orlando. He talked with Royals officials about potentially playing in the World Baseball Classic for the Dominican Republic.

• The Royals are only pursuing hitters who can play the outfield because they view their infield as fairly set. That includes Maikel Garcia as a third baseman, even though he does have defensive versatility. But he won a Gold Glove at third for a reason, and the Royals aren’t inclined to move him. They view Jonathan India and Michael Massey getting playing time at second base, but only Massey will move from second to left field when needed.