The Minnesota Twins officially waved the white flag at this year’s trade deadline. After one of the most dramatic deadline sell-offs in team history, any faint hope of a playoff push evaporated. Now, the remainder of the 2025 season isn’t about chasing October; it’s about sorting out the future.
The front office and coaching staff will spend the next two months evaluating the young core. Who’s ready to stake a claim to a 2026 roster spot? Who’s still a year away? And who, bluntly, might not be part of the picture at all? Those questions will define the on-field product.
But for fans, there’s a different race worth watching: the race to the bottom of the standings.
One of the only silver linings to being among the worst teams in baseball is the chance to secure a premium draft pick. Thanks to MLB’s new lottery system, finishing with one of the league’s worst records doesn’t guarantee the No. 1 pick, but it dramatically improves your odds of adding a franchise-altering prospect to the farm system.
As of Monday, the Twins sit at 58–66, which puts them at the eighth-worst record in baseball. On the surface, that doesn’t sound particularly “tank-worthy,” but MLB’s lottery rules give them a better shot than it seems. Because of new measures designed to discourage blatant tanking, MLB has installed restrictions on repeat appearances in the lottery. Large-market teams, those not receiving revenue sharing, are barred from lottery selections in back-to-back years. Small-market teams (revenue-sharing recipients) are barred from appearing in the lottery for three consecutive years.
This wrinkle works in the Twins’ favor. Both the Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals, teams with worse records than Minnesota, are ineligible for the 2026 lottery. That bumps the Twins up to sixth place in the current lottery standings, with 7.5% odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick and a 90% chance of picking eighth or better.
Right now, the “leaders” in the tanking sweepstakes are the Chicago White Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates, who are sitting well ahead (or behind, depending on how you frame it) with a 14-game and 6.5-game cushion over the Twins, respectively. But after those two, things get interesting. The Athletics, Braves, and Orioles are all within three games of Minnesota. A particularly bad (or good, depending on your perspective) stretch could vault the Twins up to third place in the lottery odds. That would give them a 16.5% shot at the No. 1 overall pick (equal to the top two slots) and an 80% chance of selecting in the top six. It’s unlikely the Twins will “catch” the White Sox or Pirates in the tanking standings, but climbing into the top three is very much in play over the final six weeks.
(Draft Lottery odds courtesy of Tankathon)
The 2026 MLB Draft is already shaping up as a strong class. Early names to watch include UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky, Alabama shortstop Justin Lebron, and high school left-hander Gio Rojas. Adding a talent of that caliber could accelerate Minnesota’s next competitive ramp-up. That said, it’s worth remembering that the MLB Draft isn’t like the NFL or NBA drafts. Even the “can’t-miss” players often take three to four years to debut, and many never pan out at all. But data shows that the earlier you pick, the higher the odds that your prospect develops into a big leaguer. So while fans shouldn’t pin their hopes entirely on the draft, it’s not something to ignore either.
The Twins aren’t playing for October anymore. They’re playing for 2026 and beyond. For the front office, that means evaluating the roster. For fans, it means keeping one eye on the standings—not for a Wild Card spot, but for draft lottery positioning. With the right mix of (bad) luck and standings movement, the Twins could walk away from 2025 not just with a new core of young players tested at the big-league level, but also with a golden ticket at the top of next year’s draft.
Are you invested in the “Great Tank Race of 2025”? Do you think the Twins will finish closer to the No. 3 lottery slot or slip back toward the bottom half of the top 10? Leave a comment below and start the conversation!