DALLAS -- The Mariners came away as the sport¡¯s biggest winners in the MLB Draft Lottery on Tuesday night, securing the No. 3 overall pick for 2025 despite having the second-lowest odds (0.53%) for the top overall selection among all teams in the field.

Essentially, the Mariners jumped 12 spots from what would have been their slot without a lottery. They will have their highest selection since taking catcher Mike Zunino with the third overall pick in 2012. It¡¯s just the second time that president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and Justin Hollander will pick in the Top 10, the other being right-hander Emerson Hancock at No. 6 overall in the ¡®20 Draft.

The Mariners will also pick ahead of the White Sox and Athletics, who were each ineligible for the lottery, and the Rockies and Marlins (22.5%), who had the highest odds for the top pick among the 16 eligible teams.

¡°We were just laughing,¡± said Scott Hunter, who was recently promoted to vice president of amateur scouting and has overseen the Mariners¡¯ Draft process since 2017. ¡°Like, every time you gain a spot, you're like, 'That's great.' And it gets serious, and you feel like you're actually sitting with a lottery ticket for real. It gives you the real excitement level of it."

Hunter was joined in a ballroom at the Hilton Anatole by Mariners manager Dan Wilson, who also represented the organization onstage -- and with a wide grin during the reveal -- throughout the event.

Beyond the potential to add a franchise cornerstone with such a lofty pick, the Mariners also will now have more Draft bonus pool money to work with, which could impact how they operate with the rest of their Draft and give them the ability to spread money across multiple picks.

Each selection in the first 10 rounds comes with an assigned value, but teams and players do not have to agree to those numbers, though going over incurs a penalty. Recent such examples for Seattle include 2024 second-rounder Ryan Sloan and ¡®23 first-rounder Jonny Farmelo, both of whom signed for significantly over slot value. Subsequently, the Mariners signed later picks in those years under slot value to balance out.

Hunter offered an early assessment of the 2025 class.

¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s a clear No. 1 yet, just from the outside looking in from our preliminary work,¡± Hunter said. ¡°But I do think it¡¯s a little deeper than last year. There are a few more college options than last year. There are a few more high school bats, but I do think compared to last year, there¡¯s a little more depth than we¡¯ve seen in the last few years.¡±

Earning the No. 3 selection could also give the Mariners more flexibility to potentially trade their Competitive Balance Round A Draft pick, which follows the first round and will be in the mid-30s. Those are the only picks eligible to be traded. The first time they did so was in February's deal with the White Sox for right-hander Gregory Santos, but that was with a Competitive Balance Round B pick (No. 67 overall)

¡°I think it makes it less likely, actually, because of the value of those two picks pushed together,¡± Hollander said. ¡°We were going to have, if not the highest, one of the highest pools in the league because of that pick. And you can be really creative if you so choose. You can do other things. Having two of the top 30 or whatever is super valuable, especially if one's in the top five.¡±

The lottery, which includes all non-playoff teams, was introduced at the 2022 Winter Meetings as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. This year, 16 of the 18 non-playoff teams were eligible.

The White Sox and A¡¯s were ineligible for separate but related reasons. As a team that received a lottery pick in the 2024 Draft and is a ¡°payor club¡± -- a team that gives rather than receives revenue sharing dollars -- the White Sox were not eligible for this year¡¯s lottery. The A¡¯s are a ¡°payee club,¡± but they landed lottery picks in ¡®23 and '24, and payees cannot receive a lottery pick three years in a row.