It's once again time for one of ARBA's most cherished traditions, the draft lottery! Consulting our precious message board history surprisingly revealed that I somehow did not conduct last year's draft lottery because neither of Tom's teams were involved. However, he's back on his bull**** this year with Williamstown in the bottom 5 so this awesome responsibility returns to me once again. Consulting even more ancient message board history even more surprisingly revealed that in 2023 I changed things up and actually used some newfangled technology called "Microsoft Excel" to determine draft order with a random number generator. I'm sure you'll be relieved to hear that I'm back on my bull**** this year and conducted the draft lottery with classic old school methodology.
Specifically, I followed the following sacred steps.
1) Painstakingly wrote team abbreviations on a sheet of paper to reflect their lottery chances, as shown below:
10 chances for ISL (30 wins)
8 chances for MUD (34 wins)
6 chances for BRK (52 wins, big jump there!)
3 chances for RDW (53 wins)
3 chances for WTN (53 wins)
0 chances for everyone else, most notably DGG (55 wins)
2) Cut the sheet into little pieces for each lottery chance.
3) Carefully folded the 30 pieces of paper so the team abbreviations could not be seen.
4) Placed the pieces of paper in this year's designated Hat of Randomization. This year it was a black Hawaii Volcanoes National Park hat purchased in March 2023 on an awesome trip that was supposed to include the Tomlinsons but they bailed for pathetically lame work reasons. As if lawyering is a real job anyway.
5) Shook the Hat of Randomization vigorously to ensure that the pieces of paper were fully randomized.
6) Selected one piece of paper at a time from the Hat to determine each place in the draft order from 1 to 5, discarding duplicates of course.
As is traditional, the results shall be revealed in reverse order to maximize the drama.
The 5th pick in the 2026 Draft goes to...
Redwood! (Oh well, they only had 3 in 30 chances)
The 4th pick in the 2026 Draft goes to...
Williamstown! (They also had only 3 in 30 chances)
The 3rd pick in the 2026 Draft goes to...
Mudville! (Ooh! They had the 2nd most number of chances but fell to 3rd)
The 2nd pick in the 2026 Draft goes to...
Islamorada! (Losing the most games didn't earn them the top pick)
Uh-oh, you know what that means, right?
The 1st pick in the 2026 Draft goes to...
THE BROOKLYN BLOW MONKEYS! (Jumping up from the #3 spot with a win total much closer to the 4-6 teams than 1-2)
Congratulations to Brooklyn. The pressure will be on them to top their legendary Jose Ortiz pick to kick off the 2001 IOD.
Oh yeah, if you're still reading, there's some special bonus content. I was also asked to determine draft order for some ties that involved Tom's teams.
As noted above, RDW and WTN both finished with 53 wins. WTN beat them out in the draft lottery, but RDW claimed the 4th pick in the 2nd round. Presumably they alternate after that.
As not noted above, there was also a 3-way among QUA, ROM and SFE. Sadly, SFE will pick first among this group, followed by QUA and ROM.
Okay, that concludes today's festivities. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here!
