Former Reds All-Star to serve as team's representative for 2024 MLB Draft lottery

After getting jobbed during the inaugural MLB Draft lottery last year, perhaps former catcher Devin Mesoraco will bring the Cincinnati Reds some luck tonight. Mesoraco will serve as the Reds representative for the 2024 MLB Draft lottery.

The former All-Star backstop spent almost his entire career with the Reds. From 2011-2018, Mesorcao was the one hanging the signs for Cincinnati's pitching staff. The former first-round pick suffered through a number of injuries that derailed, what could have been, a fine major league career.

Mesoraco ended his Reds tenure in 2018 when he was traded to the New York Mets in exchange for pitcher Matt Harvey. Mesoraco played fewer than 500 games in a Reds uniform while hitting .232/.309/.406 with 58 career home runs and a trip to the Midsummer Classic in 2014.

Devin Mesoraco will be the Reds representative for the 2024 MLB Draft lottery

The Cincinnati Reds lost ground in last year's MLB Draft lottery. In previous seasons, a team's win-loss record from the year prior would've determine their draft position. But those days are long gone.

In an effort to dissuade teams from tanking (purposefully fielding a below-average team with hopes of gaining a higher draft pick while paying lower salaries), Major League Baseball institued its first-ever draft lottery last season.

The Reds, were it under the old rules, would have picked fourth in last year's MLB Draft. But thanks to the MLB Draft lottery, Cincinnati fell to No. 7, while the Pittsburgh Pirates jumped all the way up to No. 1.

This year, the Cincinnati Reds have a 0.9-percent chance, per MLB.com, to secure the No. 1 pick in the 2024 MLB Draft. The lottery results do not affect those teams who qualified for the MLB Postseason, so Reds fans are hopeful that this will be the last MLB Draft lottery they have to pay attention to for quite some time.