Tigers finish tied for worst record in baseball, will pick first in 2018 MLB Draft

The 2017 MLB regular season is over, and with it we now know the order for the 2018 MLB Draft. The Detroit Tigers finished with the worst record in baseball this season, and will pick first in next year’s draft.

Detroit followed an 86-win season with a 98-loss campaign. Detroit is in full rebuild mode now, having traded away stars Justin Verlander, J.D. Martinez, Justin Upton, and others, and manager Brad Ausmus won’t return once his contract is up at the end of 2017. After all the trades, the Tigers absolutely cratered, losing 41 of their final 54 games, and will pick first in 2018.

The San Francisco Giants lost 98 games this season, finishing with their worst record since 1985. In many ways, they and the Tigers were the polar opposite of the Minnesota Twins, who lost 103 games last year and picked first in the 2017 draft, then won an American League Wild Card berth, making their first trip to the postseason since 2010.

San Francisco won the National League Wild Card Game in 2016 and took the eventual champion Chicago Cubs to four games in the NLDS. But nothing went right for the Giants in 2017, not even securing the top pick in the draft.

The Giants entered Sunday with the worst record in baseball, one game behind the Tigers, but beat the San Diego Padres, with Pablo Sandoval hitting a walk-off home run. Coupled with the Tigers’ loss, and Detroit’s worse 2016 record, the Tigers nabbed the No. 1 pick in 2018.

The MLB Draft will be held from June 4-6, 2018.

The draft is the inverse order of the previous year’s record. If multiple teams tie, the team with the worse record in the year prior picks higher.