The Chicago White Sox won the 2026 MLB draft lottery Tuesday and will pick first in next summer’s draft.

The White Sox had the best odds to get the top pick at 27.73% after finishing 60-102 in the 2025 season. They will have the top selection for the first time since taking Harold Baines in 1977.

Tuesday’s draft lottery determined the first six spots of the first round, with the remaining picks being set in inverse order of the teams’ regular-season records.

The Tampa Bay Rays will select at No. 2, and the No. 3 pick went to the Minnesota Twins, who had the second-best odds to win the lottery at 22.18%. Rounding out the six lottery picks were the San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals.

The league-worst Colorado Rockies(43-119) were not eligible for this year’s lottery because a team cannot receive a lottery pick in three consecutive years. They will pick 10th in the draft.

The Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Angels also were not eligible because they are “payor clubs” — or teams that give rather than receive revenue-sharing dollars — and cannot receive a lottery pick in consecutive years. The Nationals landed the 11th pick, while the Angels will pick 12th.

MLB and the players’ association established the lottery in the March 2022 collective bargaining agreement. The union pushed for the innovation to encourage teams to compete for wins rather than trade off players at the deadline in an attempt to get a higher draft choice.

The 2026 draft will take place July 11-12 in Philadelphia as part of MLB’s All-Star Week festivities.

The Nationals won the lottery last year and selected high school shortstop Eli Willits with the No. 1 pick.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

MLB held its fourth annual draft lottery at the winter meetings in Orlando on Tuesday, and the Chicago White Sox landed the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLB draft.

It’s still very early in the draft process, but it’s a perfect time for a quick five-pick mini-mock draft to see how things could play out in July. Four of the five players in last winter’s edition of this exercise landed in the top 11 picks on draft day, so it’s fair to think we have a reasonable idea of how the top picks will play out even though a lot can change in the seven months ahead.

Here is my early prediction for the first five picks in the 2026 MLB draft, after consulting with industry sources combined with my own scouting.

1. Chicago White Sox: Roch Cholowsky, SS, UCLA

Cholowsky was a big name in the 2023 draft, ranking 32nd on my final board as a standout defender with solid tools, but questions on his overall offensive upside along with a big asking price. His bonus price wasn’t met and he was solid as a freshman at UCLA, then took a huge jump forward as a sophomore, hitting 23 home runs last season.

He is still a standout defender but now both his (above-average) hit and (plus) power tools have developed, allowing evaluators to go back over the last decade and find comps at the tops of previous drafts, like Dansby Swanson or Troy Tulowitzki. Cholowsky has a pretty solid lead on the pack for the top pick right now, but it isn’t insurmountable due to the solid group of up-the-middle, high-upside talents in this class.

The lottery couldn’t have gone better for the White Sox after a 102-loss season, landing the top pick in a year where there is a clear preseason favorite to be the top pick. Chase Meidroth and Colson Montgomery are solid shortstop options in the big leagues with Caleb Bonemer and Billy Carlson as Top 100 types in the low minors, but Cholowsky would give the White Sox a great problem: too many good players at the most important position on the field.

2. Tampa Bay Rays: Grady Emerson, SS, Fort Worth Christian (Texas) HS, Texas commit

Emerson has been touted as the top prep prospect in the 2026 class for years and has held that title through the summer showcase season and fall workouts. He’s a 6-foot-2, left-handed hitting shortstop who projects as above average to plus at almost everything on the field. He may not be truly plus-plus at anything right now, but he’s still only 17 years old, so that could develop.

Given his long track record of being an elite prospect and being in the most desirable player demographic in the draft, he’s a consensus talent in this pick area, even for teams that don’t normally take high school players at the top. The Rays are not that team, taking a prep shortstop in the top two rounds in each of the last three drafts; Tampa Bay also loves left-handed hitters. Emerson is the rare prep prospect who is a safer pick than the vast majority of college players but also comes with more upside.

3. Minnesota Twins: Justin Lebron, SS, Alabama

Lebron was scouted as part of the loaded 2023 prep class alongside prep teammate Antonio Jimenez, who was a third-round pick of the Mets out of UCF in 2025. Lebron’s hitability and athleticism each jumped a tick right when he got to Tuscaloosa and the 6-foot-2 shortstop is now a plus runner, thrower and defender with above-average raw power. His pitch selection is fine with the only question being about his bat-to-ball ability due to worse-than-average miss rates last season, fueled somewhat by an uphill, power-driven approach. If Lebron can find a happy medium between his swing plane, contact and power, he could challenge Cholowsky as the top pick.

The Twins haven’t been scared of a little swing-and-miss if it comes with big upside in recent drafts, like with Billy Amick, Brandon Winokur and Quentin Young the last three years, but also love taking collegiate shortstops like Kaelen Culpepper, Marek Houston and Kyle DeBarge. Lebron threads the needle of certainty given his tools and positional profile but also untapped upside due to his contact/power balance being a little off kilter at the moment.

4. San Francisco Giants: Drew Burress, CF, Georgia Tech

Burress was a pick to click of mine in the 2023 draft, ranking 40th overall on my board (among the highest ranks among media and teams), but ultimately proving unsignable to the teams that also had him in that range. He stands only 5-foot-8, so impact power wasn’t expected at that point, but he had more power than you might think given his size, along with a long track record of hitting for average, plus speed and center-field defense.

Burress exploded at Georgia Tech, particularly when it comes to power — hitting 25 homers as a freshman then 19 in his sophomore year — fueled by what is now above-average raw power. He grades as above average or plus in all five tools, but his approach/swing is more power-oriented than in high school, so balancing his abilities at the plate in pro ball could be key to reaching his ceiling. The Giants have picked college position players with their top three picks each of the last two years and will likely be staring at a best available player from that same demographic in 2026.

5. Pittsburgh Pirates: A.J. Gracia, OF, Virginia

Gracia had almost no national scouting profile coming out of a New Jersey high school as a two-way player in 2023 before heading to Duke. He immediately showed scouts he should’ve been considered a real pro prospect out of high school, hitting .305 with 14 homers as a freshman, then following it up with more walks, fewer strikeouts and 15 homers as a sophomore. Gracia transferred to Virginia after the season, following much of the Duke coaching staff.

He is a 6-foot-3 center/right field tweener for now who is above average at almost everything in the batter’s box, especially his ability to lift/pull the ball in games, though his swing can get too uphill at times.

The Pirates seem to be turning the corner with Konnor Griffin and Bubba Chandler joining Paul Skenes and Co. while they’re also looking to spend money in free agency, so I see them leaning into the college position-player group that is a strength in this class.

After another week of frustrating setbacks, at the end of a frustrating year trying to bring stability to their industry, a growing number of college athletic directors say they are interested in exploring a once-unthinkable option: collective bargaining with their players.

Dozens of athletic directors will gather in Las Vegas over the next few days for an annual conference. They had hoped to be raising toasts to the U.S. House of Representatives. But for the second time in three months, House members balked last week at voting on a bill that would give the NCAA protection from antitrust lawsuits and employment threats. So instead, they will be greeted by one of the Strip’s specialties: the cold-slap realization of needing a better plan.

“I’m not sure I can sit back today and say I’m really proud of what we’ve become,” Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey told ESPN late last week. “There is a solution. We just have to work together to find it, and maybe collective bargaining is it.”

Athletic directors see only two paths to a future in which the college sports industry can enforce rules and defend them in court: Either Congress grants them an exemption from antitrust laws, or they collectively bargain with athletes. As Dickey said, and others have echoed quietly in the past several days, it has become irresponsible to continue to hope for an antitrust bailout without at least fully kicking the tires on the other option.

“If Congress ends up solving it for us, and it ends up being a healthy solution I’ll be the first one to do cartwheels down the street,” said Tennessee athletic director Danny White when speaking to ESPN about his interest in collective bargaining months ago. “But what are the chances they get it right when the NCAA couldn’t even get it right? We should be solving it ourselves.”

Some athletic directors thought they had solved their era of relative lawlessness back in July. The NCAA and its schools agreed to pay $2.8 billion in the House settlement to purchase a very expensive set of guardrails meant to put a cap on how much teams could spend to acquire players. The schools also agreed to fund the College Sports Commission, a new agency created by the settlement to police those restrictions.

But without an antitrust exemption, any school or player who doesn’t like a punishment they receive for bursting through those guardrails can file a lawsuit and give themselves a pretty good chance of wiggling out of a penalty. The CSC’s plan — crafted largely by leaders of the Power 4 conferences — to enforce those rules without an antitrust exemption was to get all their schools to sign a promise that they wouldn’t file any such lawsuits. On the same day that Congress’ attempt crumbled last week, seven state attorneys general angrily encouraged their schools not to sign the CSC’s proposed agreement.

In the wake of the attorneys general’s opposition, a loose deadline to sign the agreement came and went, with many schools declining to participate. So, college football is steamrolling toward another transfer portal season without any sheriff that has the legal backing to police how teams spend money on building their rosters.

That’s why college sports fans have heard head football coaches like Lane Kiffin openly describe how they negotiated for the biggest player payroll possible in a system where all teams are supposed to be capped at the same $20.5 million limit. Right now, the rules aren’t real. The stability promised as part of the House settlement doesn’t appear to be imminent. Meanwhile, the tab for potential damages in future antitrust lawsuits continues to grow larger with each passing day.

Collective bargaining isn’t easy, either. Under the current law, players would need to be employees to negotiate a legally binding deal. The NCAA and most campus leaders are adamantly opposed to turning athletes into employees for several reasons, including the added costs and infrastructure it would require.

The industry would need to make tough decisions about which college athletes should be able to bargain and how to divide them into logical groups. Should the players be divided by conference? Should all football players negotiate together? What entity would sit across from them at the bargaining table?

On Monday, Athletes.Org, a group that has been working for two years to become college sports’ version of a players’ union, published a 35-page proposal for what an agreement might look like. Their goal was to show it is possible to answer the thorny, in-the-weeds questions that have led many leaders in college sports to quickly dismiss collective bargaining as a viable option.

Multiple athletic directors and a sitting university president are taking the proposal seriously — a milestone for one of the several upstart entities working to gain credibility as a representative for college athletes. Syracuse chancellor and president Kent Syverud said Monday that he has long felt the best way forward for college sports is a negotiation where athletes have “a real collective voice in setting the rules.”

“[This template] is an important step toward that kind of partnership-based framework,” he said in a statement released with AO’s plan. “… I’m encouraged to see this conversation happening more openly, so everyone can fully understand what’s at stake.”

White, the Tennessee athletic director, has also spent years working with lawyers to craft a collective bargaining option. In his plan, the top brands in college football would form a single private company, which could then employ players. He says that would provide a solution in states where employees of public institutions are not legally allowed to unionize.

“I don’t understand why everyone’s so afraid of employment status,” White said. “We have kids all over our campus that have jobs. … We have kids in our athletic department that are also students here that work in our equipment room, and they have employee status. How that became a dirty word, I don’t get it.”

White said athletes could be split into groups by sport to negotiate for a percentage of the revenue they help to generate.

The result could be expensive for schools. Then again, paying lawyers and lobbyists isn’t cheap either. The NCAA and the four power conferences combined to spend more than $9 million on lobbyists between 2021 and 2024, the latest year where public data is available. That’s a relatively small figure compared to the fees and penalties they could face if they continue to lose antitrust cases in federal court.

“I’m not smart enough to say [collective bargaining] is the only answer or the best answer,” Dickey said. “But I think the onus is on us to at least curiously question: How do you set something up that can be sustainable? What currently is happening is not.”

Players and coaches are frustrated with the current system, wanting to negotiate salaries and build rosters with a clear idea of what rules will actually be enforced. Dickey says fans are frustrated as they invest energy and money into their favorite teams without understanding what the future holds. And athletic directors, who want to plan a yearly budget and help direct their employees, are frustrated too.

“It has been very difficult on campus. I can’t emphasize that enough,” White said. “It’s been brutal in a lot of ways. It continues to be as we try to navigate these waters without a clear-cut solution.”

This week White and Dickey won’t be alone in their frustration. They’ll be among a growing group of peers who are pushing to explore a new solution.