The Baseball Writers Association of America announced the finalists for the 2024 awards this evening. Bobby Witt Jr. was among the finalists for American League MVP, indicating he finished in the top three in the balloting. As Matt Eddy of Baseball America points out (on X), that’ll earn the Royals an extra pick after the first round of the 2025 draft.
The 2022 collective bargaining agreement introduced the Prospect Promotion Incentive to dissuade teams from keeping their top talents in the minors. A team that carries a top prospect for a full year of service can receive a draft choice if that player finds success early in his career.
A player would earn his team a pick for winning Rookie of the Year or finishing in the top three in Cy Young or MVP voting within his pre-arbitration years (essentially his first three seasons of service). A team can only add one PPI selection per player. In previous seasons, Julio Rodríguez, Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll have earned their teams a PPI choice by winning Rookie of the Year.
Kansas City carried Witt, a consensus top prospect, on the roster for the entire 2022 season. The star shortstop did not earn the Rookie of the Year pick, finishing fourth in the balloting. He instead becomes the first player to earn his team an extra selection through the top three MVP placement in his third season. That’s a more difficult path that’ll presumably happen far less frequently than the Rookie of the Year route. They’ll take it all the same.
In February, the Royals signed Witt to an 11-year extension that guaranteed him a little less than $289MM. That did not take away from Witt’s eligibility for the Prospect Promotion Incentive even though he was no longer slated for a salary around the league minimum. He’s likely to finish as the MVP runner-up behind Aaron Judge after racking up a season worth around nine wins above replacement. Witt won the batting title and led the majors with 211 hits. He finished the year with a .332/.389/.588 slash line with 32 homers and 109 runs batted in while playing plus defense at the infield’s most demanding position. The Royals won 86 games to snap a nine-year postseason drought.
This is the only guaranteed PPI selection to date, but there could be more once award winners are announced next week. The Padres and Orioles would stand to gain an extra pick if Jackson Merrill and Colton Cowser win their respective Rookie of the Year awards. Austin Wells is also eligible but is a longer shot to win AL Rookie of the Year.
The Pirates cannot get an extra pick for Paul Skenes finishing in the top three in Cy Young balloting because Pittsburgh did not call the star righty up until early May. They would not receive a selection if Skenes wins Rookie of the Year for the same reason. Skenes would earn himself a full year of service time in the likely event that he places in the top two in ROY voting, however.
The other Rookie of the Year finalists also do not meet the PPI criteria. Luis Gil was not on two of the preseason Top 100 lists at Baseball America, ESPN or MLB Pipeline — the necessary prospect status to earn a pick. The Brewers carried Jackson Chourio for a full season but signed him to an eight-year extension last December. Eddy reported in September that players who sign an extension before their MLB debuts are not eligible for a PPI selection. Chourio’s extension differs from Witt’s because the latter had already played in MLB before signing.
Well deserved. Royals run a decent ship would be interesting to see if they had Dodger or Met money.
But if they spent like the Dodgers, Mets or Yankees, people would hate on them. I prefer to watch clubs like the Royals, Reds and Pirates.
So the Pirates don’t get an extra pick for Skenes eventhough he was good enough to get a top 3 in the Cy Young? And he gets the extra year of service? That seems odd.
I think they will but won’t know until the awards are announced. I don’t think you can double dip and he’s up for ROY as well. One of those should yield a pick
The Pirates cannot get a pick for Skenes. It wouldn’t matter if he won Cy Young and Rookie of the Year. He’s ineligible for that portion of the PPI because they didn’t carry him on the MLB roster for a full service year. He can (and very likely will) still earn himself the bonus service year by finishing in the top two in ROY.
This has happened with Adley Rutschman and Michael Harris as well. It’s a bit odd on the surface to have the player eligible for one portion of the PPI and not the other, but the point of both rules is to try to get teams to carry guys from Opening Day rather than calling them up in May or June.
In theory, the Pirates are getting the “worst of both worlds” here because they didn’t carry Skenes for the full season but called him up early enough that he was able to earn the service year anyway. There are worse things than having five and a half seasons of a player that good, so I doubt they’re really complaining.
Appreciate the knowledge
Terribly ran franchise !
They didn’t preserve his arm either. He still racked up all those innings in 3a
Should’ve brought him up opening day. It’s their own fault.
Only odd if you don’t know the rules. Pirates get what they deserved for being too stupid to bring Skenes up to start the year.
The rules just changed. And it still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Saying he should have been on the team on opening day is hindsight. The Pirstes weren’t manipulating service time here they just drafted the guy in 2023.
It makes no sense whatsoever. How often does the best prospect(s) win the ROY award? I think the top bWAR in the AL was Abreu, and no one penciled him in for ROY. I don’t care who you are, your chances of winning the ROY is probably less than 10%. I’d guess that the expected WAR of the top-10 prospects is small and the variance is huge.
If you guys tracked the betting line of Skeens and winning ROY, you’d say otherwise. Plus he completely dominated 3a. They held him down and it cost em a pic
They absolutely did not hold him down.
The rules is in place for situations like Kris Bryant a few years back. That was wrong. What the Pirates did with Skenes was not.
It cost them a pic. And their gm is paid to understand that even when it’s complicated to you and I. Also, he had the pedigree of strasburg, once in a generation talent so they should have been expecting an outstanding year
The rule is beyond dumb.
Good enough idea but too many rules and scenarios that are too confusing, and pretty crappy that the Pirates are screwed by Skenes earning an extra year yet they get nothing in return, no pick, for his great season, just because he didn’t break camp with the team. Pitchers are a lot different than hitters as you actually have to manage their innings.
You think it is dumb for Skenes. What about other players that are kept down for one reason or another. I thought they changed the rules on manipulating years of service but not sure. It hurts one guy but saves 10 more. Is that worth it? I would say yes. Tough for Skenes but if it saves the rest is a good thing.
If KC signs a free agent that has a QO attach to them, say Teoscar or Santande, will they lose the pick that was just awarded to them?
They would have to give up their third highest pick, but I’m not 100% certain if the extra pick via Witt would be part of that count
It would count only if it counted. The formula doesn’t change if it was their 3rd highest pick it would count. Most likely will be second and not affected.
A weird system.
Is a very weird system where no one understands and then learns and goes “ohh that kinda makes sense” lol
It’s like when Nancy Pelosi said that Congress needed to vote on legislation in order to find out what was in the bill.
Nancy Pelosi’s next bill will make it legal for Congress and the Senate to use insider trading until they die. It would also make it legal for current ones to pass down the info for anyone out of office to receive it. Go in as a middle class citizen and come out as a multimillionaire.
So we are punishing the pirates for properly managing Skenes innings? That’s dumb, he gets the year of service just give them the darn pick.
Service time is counted in days on roster not innings pitched. Limiting his innings was a non factor. Not bringing him up earlier was.
Pirates were limiting his innings though. Teams routinely send guys down esp young guys to limit their workload. Reason they didn’t call him up sooner is they were intentionally going to limit his work load to less than 175 this year. And they did.
In his 7 starts in the minors Skenes only went 27.1 innings, roughly 4 a start.
To say limiting innings was a non factor is grossly inaccurate. Nobody questions why you’re having a prospect like skenes go 4 innings in the minors. Everybody questions why you have skenes go 4 innings in an mlb game.
It’s not grossly inaccurate the metric for the award is service time not innings. Didn’t matter how many innings he threw anywhere. He could have thrown 8 a start in the minors and pros and wouldn’t have qualified because he wasn’t in the show long enough. He could have thrown 4 a start in the show and qualified if he was doing it from day one
The extra year of control hell get for ROY will pro be more valuable to them anyway
OK guys this rule hurts one player but if it helps 5-10-50 players is it a good rule? You need to think long term not just about the one player.
So KC got a #1, for a #3? Not crappie at all
i did the best i could
I beg to differ, sweetbuns!
Brewers should have waited until the day after Chuorio made his debut to announce the extension.
Yet the player doesn’t get anything extra…
Witt has a gigantic contract. I am sure he will still be able to feed his family…..
That’s not true at all, they receive a payout from the pre-arbitration bonus pool for their finish in award voting. A 3rd place finish in MVP is a $1.5M bonus, a 1st place finish is $2.5M. There’s other money allocated by WAR.
Bobby Witt got like $1.2M from this last year.
Rewarded for developing your prospects. Hmm…
Too bad mets couldnt cash in on this PPI Pick with alonso. They lost yr of service & no pick