Could Good Fortune in the 2025 MLB Draft Lottery Deliver Ethan Holliday to the Rockies?

The Colorado Rockies have never had the first overall pick in the MLB Draft despite falling below .500 in 23 of their 32 seasons since becoming an expansion franchise in 1993.

On December 10, there’s a chance all that could change.

At 61-101 this past season, Colorado had the 29th-best record in all of Major League Baseball and the worst record in the National League. From the first Rule 4 Draft in 1965 up until a few years ago, a team like the Rockies could have expected to make the second overall pick in next’s year MLB Draft, as the order was arranged by reverse standings.

Under the new collective bargaining agreement that began in 2022, a draft lottery was created. The teams with the worst three records are awarded with the best odds at receiving the no. 1 pick. All 18 clubs that miss the postseason have a chance to select first overall.

Conversely, this can also mean that a team like the Kansas City Royals, who had the second-worst record in 2023 at 56-106, could drop down to the sixth pick, which is what happened in the lottery one year ago. 

Colorado has a 22.45% chance of winning the 2025 MLB Draft Lottery at the Winter Meetings in Dallas on Dec. 10. This is the largest percentage for any team to date.

The Rockies also shared the best odds with the Royals and Oakland Athletics at 18.3% last December. The previous year’s high of 16.5% was held by the A’s, Washington Nationals and Pittsburgh Pirates, who won and selected Paul Skenes with the first overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft.

Marc Gustafson, Senior Director of Scouting Operations for Colorado, isn’t dreaming too much about landing pick no. 1 at this point.

“Do we pick two? Are we gonna pick three?” he said. “January, obviously we’re going to know where we’re going to pick. When we bring everybody together here at Coors Field with meetings, that’s when the excitement starts. And it’s always a different year, right? We know there’s a lot of good players that will be available for us.”

The Cleveland Guardians managed to win the 2024 MLB Draft Lottery with only a 2.0% chance. At one point during the announcement show, the top three picks were down to only the Guardians, Cincinnati Reds (0.90% chance) and Rockies. Did Gustafson ever have a moment where he thought Colorado would be the last name called? 

“Yeah, I suppose. But you know, at that point in time, when you’re going through it, I don’t have any control over it,” he said. “So whatever happens, happens.”

The Rockies ended up with the third pick and selected Golden Spikes Award winner Charlie Condon. Their counterparts in Oakland and Kansas City dropped to picks no. 4 and 6, respectively.

No matter where Colorado’s pick lands for 2025, Gustafson’s job remains the same as it did when he was first appointed to his role in 2011.

“The excitement is to replace (Charlie Condon) with somebody else like him, and just keep filling the system up,” Gustafson said. “That’s what keeps our scouts going. Because it’s kind of that calendar: you draft, you scout, you sign, you bring them into the system, and then you get ready for next year.”

Scouting enters the slowest time of the year as many Division I fall ball programs come to a close and the high school showcase circuit takes a break before next spring. Everyone in the scouting department still stays busy, especially since the advent of the transfer portal and NIL rules. 

“It’s a little bit harder,” Gustafson said of the changes to college baseball. “But with technology, we can pretty much search where players have transferred. So we’ve got a great crew upstairs that they can track players and where they are at, who we need to see and create a depth chart. But it’s different.”

The First Overall Pick

Should the Rockies be the last team standing and win the 2025 MLB Draft Lottery, there will be no shortage of amateur talents for them to pick from.

Tops on many draft boards is a player Colorado is already quite familiar with: Ethan Holliday, son of 15-year big leaguer Matt Holliday. The elder Holliday played in purple for five seasons and was critical in the club’s only World Series appearance in 2007, the same year he finished second in National League MVP voting.

The 17-year-old Stillwater (OK) HS shortstop has many around the sport thinking he has the potential to be even better than his older brother, Jackson Holliday of the Baltimore Orioles, who entered the year as the consensus no. 1 prospect in the minor leagues.

Ethan is taller — currently 6’4” and 195 lbs with room for even more growth — and has the same pedigree to go first overall, too. Together, Jackson and Ethan have a chance at becoming the first pair of brothers to be selected no. 1 in the draft.

But the Rockies have been going heavy on college talent in recent years. The last four drafts have seen the organization select only three high school players with their 85 picks, including none in 2024.

“The elite high schoolers are still going to sign. So that process is still exciting,” Gustafson said of the decrease in high school picks. “What it does is it’s a challenge for us as a group to really know the player: What’s in his heart, what’s in his mind, does he want to go to pro ball, does he want to go college? So we’re going to spend a lot of time this fall doing in-home visits and continuing to do the meetings, the in-person meetings, and that’s going to be essential for this offseason.”

If there could be one glowing exception for the Rockies when it comes to drafting a player out of high school, it’s most definitely Ethan Holliday.

When Matt Holliday returned to Denver in late August to take in the Coors Field debut of his oldest son, the conversation quickly turned to the younger prodigy.

“Ethan’s hitting the ball in the 110-112 (mph exit velocity) range with the wood bat at 17 years old. So he might have me (in terms of power),” the seven-time All-Star said.

There’s much less risk for the Rockies in taking Holliday than any other high school option for 2025 because of their familiarity with the family and the overall elite tools that Ethan possesses. Regardless, Colorado will have arguably the greatest pressure in team history to get the top pick in 2025 right.

Both the Chicago White Sox and the Athletics are currently feeling the brunt of the draft lottery rules and are not eligible for a lottery pick in 2025.

In fact, the White Sox and A’s can pick no higher than 10th because of the new rules geared towards discouraging tanking or — phrased in a different light — rewarding consistent failures. (You read that correctly: The team that racked up 121 losses, most in the modern era, will have at least nine of the best amateur players taken off the board before their turn.)

With a top-six pick again in 2025, Colorado would select 10th, at best, in 2026.

Several other players are currently in consideration to be selected with the first overall pick in 2025, such as a slew of college talents including OF Jace LaViolette (Texas A&M), RHP Tyler Bremner (UC Santa Barbara) and LHP Jamie Arnold (Florida State).

Even though the Rockies have selected five outfielders in the first or supplemental first round since 2020 — not to mention three other outfielders who crept into the top nine prospects, according to MLB Pipeline — selecting the best player available is paramount for a club in search of its next superstar.

Losing 100 games in consecutive seasons is not bad luck. But if Colorado is going to escape the wrong side of history, maybe some good luck will come its way and gift it the first overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft.