The Kansas City Royals Rise To 6th Pick 2026 MLB Draft
Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. For the Kansas City Royals, a team that has seen its fair share of misfortune, a little bit of luck at the MLB Draft Lottery on Tuesday night felt like a long-overdue win.
Let’s be honest, nobody in Kansas City was holding their breath. The team, fresh off an 82-80 season that saw them just miss the playoffs, went into the lottery with a laughable 0.84% chance at the top pick. They were slated to pick somewhere in the mid-teens, a position that usually nets you a solid, but rarely franchise-altering, prospect. It was the kind of scenario Royals fans have become grimly accustomed to: good enough to not be terrible, but not quite good enough to get the game-changing talent that comes with a top pick.
But then, the lottery balls bounced in a way they haven’t for Kansas City in a long, long time.
A Stroke Of Luck For the Royals
Against all odds, the Royals rocketed up the draft board, jumping a whopping 10 spots to snag the sixth overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft. Manager Matt Quatraro, representing the team in Orlando, must have been wearing his lucky socks. I wonder if they were white since the Chicago White Sox won the lottery with the best odds.
General Manager J.J. Picollo couldn’t hide his relief. “That’s awesome,” he said, and you could practically hear the exhale through the phone lines. “To get the sixth pick feels like a little vindication.”
Vindication is right. It feels like a cosmic makeup call for past draft lotteries where the Royals had better odds and still managed to slide down the board. This time, the baseball gods threw them a bone. A big one. It’s a rare moment of sheer, unadulterated good fortune for a franchise that often has to scratch and claw for every small victory.
Why the Sixth Pick Is a Game-Changer
Sure, sixth isn’t first, but let’s not downplay what this means. Moving from the 16th pick to the 6th during the lottery is a monumental leap in the world of baseball drafts. It’s the difference between hoping a top-tier talent falls to you and being in a position to actively choose one.
Picollo highlighted the two-fold benefit: talent and money. “The higher you are, theoretically, the better player you should get,” he noted. “There’s finances attached to that pick, too… It’s a pretty significant difference.”
That financial flexibility is huge. The signing bonus pool money allocated to the sixth pick is substantially higher than what’s available in the middle of the first round. This gives the Royals options.
Building On Past Success
The Royals have a decent track record with the sixth pick. They selected Jac Caglianone with that same selection in the 2024 draft, a player who made his MLB debut last season. While it’s still early, grabbing another high-ceiling prospect from that same draft slot could create a powerful young core for the future.
This unexpected windfall allows the front office to start its homework early. Prospects that seemed like pipe dreams are now squarely on their radar. As the team aims to build a sustainable winner, landing a potential star in 2026—while the current roster is still competitive—is the kind of roster-building magic that can define an era. It’s how smart teams stay good.
The 2026 MLB Draft is still a ways off, scheduled for July in Philadelphia. But for a team and a fanbase that needed a reason to feel genuinely optimistic about the future, Tuesday night provided just that for Royals fans.
