"First egg is about to come out."

So said Tatt Mareeco, the owner of the team named The Committee (shortened from "The Committee To Elect Sweet Lou Whitaker to the Hall of Fame" because the text box on Yahoo's fantasy baseball website doesn't have space for the full name) who organized Friday's draft lottery. Mareeco went out and bought twelve colored plastic eggs and printed labels bearing the name of each team. He then punched a whole in the lid of a box, put the eggs inside, and, as we gathered in the 18th floor conference room at our office at noon, had one of the owners of Dr. Rosendowell (they are the league's only co-owned team) pick out the eggs one by one. David Stern, though invited to attend as an honorary observer, was unexpectedly absent.

Geleaux summarized the results of the lottery in an e-mail to the league later in the afternoon:

Thanks to the efforts of Mareeco, we have completed the lottery with little to no controversy. The fact that it was observed by a majority of the league helped.

In the end it was decided that the fairest (and easiest) way to pick the order would be to simply pick numbers 1-12 for each team. The 5 keeper teams have forfeited their picks for the first three rounds. Keep in mind that the order snakes throughout the draft, so the 1st pick in the first rd is the last pick in the fourth.
Here is the order - and the picks each team will get through the first four rds (aka the dispersal draft and the 1st round of the live draft). Keep in mind the dispersal draft numbers (1-21) are skewed downwards slightly:

1. D.J. Dozier and Friends (1, 14, 15, 48)
2. ZAGS (47)
3. The Kurt Bevormos (2, 13, 16, 46)
4. Little Italy (3, 12, 17, 45)
5. Operation Shutdown (44)
6. Team Italy (43)
7. The Vipers (42)
8. The Committee (4, 11, 18, 41)
9. The Octagon (5, 10, 19, 40)
10. Dr. Rosendowell (6, 9, 20, 39)
11. Mitro Nitro (7, 8, 21, 38)
12. Skillz That Killz (37)

The "dispersal draft" that Geleaux mentions in his e-mail, and that has been referenced in prior posts, is the result of a (contentious) league vote that allows the veteran owners (i.e. those owners who owned teams the past two seasons) the option of keeping three of their layers in exchange for sacrificing their first three picks of the draft. It was a good option for some of the league owners, Geleaux's Operation Shutdown for example, who kept Mark Teixiera, Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez, arguably two first round picks and perhaps a high second rounder.

Six owners in all chose to keep. The owners who opted not to keep, as well as the new owners, are in the so-called "dispersal draft" and for the first three rounds will choose from any players in the bigs, with the exception of the 18 kept players (the list of keepers will be the subject of a later post).

What made the dispersal draft option appealing to some of the veteran owners of the league is that, as mentioned in this blog's first ever post, three of the owners from the league's first two seasons were booted from the league under evidence of impropriety. All the players from those three teams are now available in the draft, including some of the top players on any draft board: A-Rod, Papi, Abreu, Bay, Vlad and Derrek Lee. My team, The Kurt Bevormos, chose to enter the draft (giving up my guaranteed rights to Jake Peavy who was on my roster last season), and fell into the second pick.

Assuming A-Rod goes to D.J. Dozier and Friends, will Derrek Lee join The Kurt Bevormos? Or will Vladdy? Perhaps. Or perhaps The Bevormos will enter into some kind of transaction, and move further down in the draft. As the closing line in Geleaux's e-mail makes clear, anything is now possible:

All kept players and draft picks are fully tradeable from this point on.