How does the competitive balance lottery work, and what do you have to do to be eligible for it?

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120716&content_id=35035642

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120718&content_id=35145866&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

I still have some questions after reading these articles, but the 10 teams with the lowest payroll and the 10 smallest-market teams are eligible, and the Venn diagram of that gives you the 13 teams that were eligible this year. The odds of getting a pick are weighted in favor of those teams with more losses.

One very interesting thing is these picks can be traded. I'm eager to see how many of these picks get included in trades.

J-Dog,

For future reference, this probably would get a lot more feedback if it was posted in the forum instead of in a blog.

John