The Prospect Promotion Incentive was instituted as part of the latest collective bargaining agreement prior to the 2022 season. As the name implies, it’s designed to incentivize teams to more quickly promote their top prospects to the majors and avoid service time manipulation to gain a seventh year of team control over a given player. If an eligible player wins the Rookie of the Year award or is a finalist for either the MVP or Cy Young award before he reaches arbitration eligibility, then his team will be awarded a pick immediately after the first round of the following year’s draft.
Over the first three years of the incentive’s existence, four players have earned a PPI pick for their team: Julio Rodriguez, Gunnar Henderson, and Corbin Carroll all did so by winning their league’s Rookie of the Year award, while Bobby Witt Jr. did so last year by finishing second in AL MVP voting. That’s more than one player per year bringing in an extra pick for their team, and that collection of some of the league’s brightest young stars would have otherwise been prime candidates for service time manipulation; all were viewed as among the game’s best prospects, and all except Carroll had not yet signed an extension with their club although both Witt and Rodriguez would do so later on. The Mariners, in particular, had a history of manipulating service time with their best prospects including a controversy surrounding their handling of then-top prospect Jarred Kelenic.
In the cases of Rodriguez, Henderson, and Witt, the club in question evidently felt that the combination of a potential PPI pick and a full season of their top prospect in the majors was the better choice to pursue than the possibility of a seventh year of team control. The fact that players who finish in the top-two of Rookie of the Year voting are awarded a full year of service time even if they have not yet reached 172 days naturally surely factors into that calculation as well; the Pirates held star right-hander Paul Skenes back from their Opening Day roster and ended up with the worst of both worlds when he won the NL Rookie of the Year award last year. Not only did they not receive a PPI pick for Skenes’s win after he wasn’t included on their roster to begin the year, but his win cost them that extra year of team control gained by holding him back in until May anyway. 2015 NL Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant surely would’ve appreciated the opportunity to get that same bump in service time and move his free agency up to the 2020-21 offseason.
Not all instances of the PPI’s influence are quite this cut-and-dry, however. One recent trend regarding PPI-eligible prospects has been for clubs to put potential Rookie of the Year candidates on their Opening Day roster (or promote them early enough in the season so that they retain PPI eligibility) before giving them a short run in the majors and optioning them to the minor leagues if they don’t excel. The Cubs recently did exactly this with top infield prospect Matt Shaw, who was promoted back today after making the Opening Day roster, struggling in 18 games, and then spending a month at Triple-A. The Orioles have used this tactic when handling the promotions of Grayson Rodriguez and Jackson Holliday, as well.
Exactly how much those demotions had to do with service time and how much they had to do with performance can be debated, but it’s a method that allows a team to essentially hedge their bets by only extracting that extra year of team control once the PPI-eligible player has struggled enough in the majors to make a top-two finish in Rookie of the Year voting extremely unlikely. Aside from those cases, there are also some teams that seem completely undeterred from holding down their top prospects by the PPI. The aforementioned Pirates fall into this group even after the debacle with Skenes last year, as they’ve shown no inclination towards promoting top pitching prospect Bubba Chandler despite his dominance at Triple-A and the club’s struggles at the big league level.
How do MLBTR readers view the incentive? Has it been a success because it’s allowed players like Skenes to earn a full year of service while getting players like Henderson the opportunity to break camp with the big league team on Opening Day of their rookie seasons? Or is the fact that players like Chandler are still being held down in the minors while players like Shaw and Holliday have been sent back to Triple-A once they’re no longer good bets to bring in a PPI evidence enough that the system is ineffective? Have your say in the poll below:
It’s hurt players. Caused even more service time manipulation.
Could you elaborate?
Meow – I just wrote about this the other day! LOL!!
Campbell was the only top prospect signed by the Sox, the deal was mostly done in ST but the extension wasn’t agreed upon until shortly after the start of the regular season for a reason …. it allows the team to use Campbell for a potential PPI pick.
As a result, he was the only one of the Red Sox Big 3 prospects who made the team and has been on the team all season while the others haven’t even sniffed a promotion yet.
If the Sox keep Campbell on the team and he accumulates a year’s service time this season (172 days on the active roster), he gives the team a chance to land a high draft pick (right after the first round).
So in Campbell’s case, the Sox valued the draft pick more than keeping him in the minors without a contract extension to potentially gain an extra year of service time.
Meanwhile, keeping both Anthony and Mayer in the minors potentially benefits the Sox in TWO ways:
1) Gives Campbell a better chance of winning ROY
2) Gives the team a better chance of retaining an additional year of team control for both Mayer and Anthony because it’s harder to finish high in ROY voting when you miss a big portion of the season
So yeah, PPI benefits the owners but also encourages even MORE service time manipulation.
Ah, yeah, I see what you mean. I wonder if there’s any real, enforceable solution to this… Maybe something Rule 5ish?
So? They would’ve held all 3 of them back without the PPI system.
No matter how many players are still being held back, they’d be held back either way, while at least some of them are getting earlier promotions.
Lan – Not true, please re-read my post.
Each regular season consists of 187 days.
Before PPI, a player needed to be kept in the minors for just 15 days of the regular season in order for the team to maintain control over him an extra year.
Now with PPI there is no set amount of days, however realistically a player would need to be kept in the minors for at least 87 days to ensure the team gets the extra year of control.
So YES the current PPI system is causing players to be kept down longer. That is the only legit reason why Anthony is still down in the minors, and likely the same for Mayer.
At this point, it makes sense to keep Anthony down in AAA until he can no longer reach 45 days of service or 130 at-bats. That would maintain rookie eligibility for 2026 and keep the PPI prospect in play.
mohoney – So you’re saying keep him down until at least mid-August? So then forfeit this season?
That would generate a huge backlash from everyone …. fans, media, players union ……
If the Sox truly want to start trying to win next year,they need to have Mayer and Anthony gaining experience this year.
The deadline wasn’t moved. There’s no more benefit to 87 days compared to 15 days, just an incentive and disincentive system on top of it.. I don’t even know where you came up that number of 87!
Anthony and Mayer would still be AAA either way. If they weren’t brought up after just 15 days, then there are actual performance-related reasons for it.
They’d have to be kept down until at least August to retain eligibility for rookie status next year, and if they were truly ready at the beginning of the year, it makes no sense to lose 4 months of performance just for the possibility of an extra draft pick.
Lan – With all due respect you’re not getting it.
It went from a 15-day deadline to a non-specific deadline based on ROY voting, that’s absolutely a movement.
After missing approximately 87 days of the regular season, it’s pretty much impossible to be a serious contender for ROY. That’s where the 87 comes from, and that’s why many teams would want to keep their star prospect in the minors for the first half of the season …. it results in an extra year of team control.
If you believe a player can win ROY in the same year they are kept down for more than half a season, then please provide examples.
For you to say management wouldn’t keep a player down without a good reason, I’m sorry but that’s very naive. EVERYONE believes Anthony has deserved to be called up already, he’s not gaining anything by staying in the minors.
In your last paragraph you’re getting the compensatory draft pick mixed up with the extra year of team control, probably best to move on :O)
Then your 87 game number is completely arbitrary and also wrong, as it is possible to still finish Top 2 in Rookie of the Year at that point.
As an example: Ryan Howard won in 2005 with only 88 games played.
In any case,, if the prospect was truly ready at the beginning of the season, no team would give up an entire half year of production to guarantee the extra year of control when they would probably get it anyway after just 15 days. That’s what we call a sucker’s bet
Even if a team was stupid enough to do that regularly, they’d just be putting themselves at a disadvantage by giving up more value than they’d gain on average
Since the Red Sox are not a stupid organization who do realize they have nothing left to gain with service time manipulation after 15 days, then either you’re wrong and the Red Sox don’t actually believe he deserves to get called up yet, or their roster situation is such that they believe he’s better off getting regular playing time in AAA than coming off the bench on the Major League team. The latter situation happens all the time.
My last paragraph referred to the possibility of holding a player in AAA until he retains rookie eligibility for next year in 2026, a completely different scenario where they think the prospect would have a better chance to finish Top 2 in RotY (and thus better chance of getting the extra draft pick) than he would in 2025. As I said, that kind of move would also be stupid, as they’d be much better off getting the extra production while still shooting for the 2025 award. It would only make sense if they weren’t going to call up the prospect until mid-season anyway, at which point the prospect has nothing to gain by being held back an extra month or two after already missing both the full season of service time and the Super 2 cutoff.
The Sox clearly timed the official signing so that he would be eligible. The decision to extend though was not influenced by it. Either a team wants to ake the risk and lock up young controllable talent or they do not. From that point forward his service time is irrelevant. The other 3 players potentially being held down are geld down for their service time if it’s truly the Teams motivation. Campbell would not be the sole reason of them being held back either, any young player with options or any player they don’t want to release, any player they don’t want to put on waivers, etc… all those reasons coupled with the players held backs service time become the reason.
The ultimate issue with this system is the reward is not strong enough. Only a select few rookies are ready to contend for rookie of the year. Those that are ready are also subject to how much young talent is ahead of them playing as rookies due to having to be called. If they widened the reward for calling them up early it might lead to a meaningful bit of young talent who deserve to be getting called up getting that chance.
@Lanidrac Yes some teams have delayed calling up prospects who were ready because they weren’t going to start service time while they weren’t contending.
For true contenders it often makes no sense to delay calling up when they know they re currently contenders opposed to projecting where they ll be in that year gained later on.
Ultimately this system isn’t doing much except fast track the elite of the elite. In doing so it helps get young marketable up quick to generate revenue. Not enough teams are rewarded that it has any meaningful impact on negating service time and letting talent dictate the process. If MLB truly wants the most talented players up tie it to age or total years on the organization. Then it’s a fixed clock, no time to be manipulated. The current system is just a dog amd pony show to appease fans.
Lan – No less than 4 times I’ve said the 87 missing days (and it’s not “games” like you keep saying) is a reasonable estimate because there is no minimum day requirement for winning ROY …. if that’s what you consider completely arbitrary then so be it.
Ryan Howard was obviously an exception that you had to go back 20 years to find. He had a .924 OPS as a rookie, which was far far better than the next best with a minimum of 320 PA’s (Garrett Atkins .773 OPS) so Howard obviously had zero competition.
I do appreciate you bringing facts into the conversation, and if it’s just the 87 days you’re hung up on then fine let’s go with 107 days missed instead ;O)
You’re mixing up the old service time policy with the new PPI policy. Holding them back for 15 days no longer guarantees they won’t receive a full year of service time during their rookie season.
On the contrary, the Red Sox are indeed a “stupid organization” with many, many examples provided on a regular basis here. They are all about the money now, winning hasn’t been a priority since 2018.
You’re wrong, Anthony is not being blocked by the starting outfield. Their starting CF has a career .661 OPS and career .278 OBP because he swings at everything, he should be demoted to bench player or sent down to AAA with Anthony replacing him. The Red Sox might be in first place right now if they had made the switch to start the season.
Regarding your last paragraph, you are making the assumption Anthony would be improving even more by playing this entire season in the minors. That is not how it works, if you keep a great prospect at AAA for 8 years it doesn’t mean he will break every single season record imaginable when he does finally get promoted.
The only way Anthony can improve going forward is to start gaining experience in the majors. If anything, staying in the minors too long can become a detriment.
Some teams are stupid so they will mess it up. But for a team who knows what they are doing this changes nothing. Hurts players. It’s not as big of a blunder as the draft lottery to prevent tanking. Oh we can’t possibly be bad enough to be worst team in baseball but hey we can be third worst and get same odds! 4th 5th ain’t to shabby of odds! No way can we bad enough to catch the White Sox or A’s. Can’t catch the Rockies. What they aren’t eligible? We don’t have to be worse than them? Awesome!
If a player is doing great and ready to be called up in say July August well you have to wait until August 30h September 1st now. Be foolish not to wait so you can still get them mlb experience so they can fall just short of losing prospect status and be a front runner for ROY the next year to get you that draft pick. Arizona with Corbin Carroll
Good and should start opening day to get that end of 1st round draft pick right? No. You think that draft pick is more valuable than an entire year of a good great stud player? Heck no. Why Skenes didn’t make opening day roster. Normally he would have been called up early mid April to secure that extra year. They waited until May because you gotta make sure he can’t win ROY. Well he pitched like no rookie or not many ever has and won it anyways. They didn’t see that coming and he was so dominating in AAA and so high profile they couldn’t hold off any longer. They learned their lesson though. Go look at Bubba Chandler stats and he still isn’t here.
It does help teams buy out players free agent years and at a fraction of the cost.
It’s good for top 100 prospects but not top 30 top 20 top 10. A extra years of a Witt Skenes etc is most likely going to be more valuable than the entire career of the 30 something draft pick.
Also a prospect can make opening day roster but not doing well enough to win ROY well just send them down to get more minor league seasoning and gain that extra year of control.
All these benefit the team. The team controls the players destiny. If it is good for the player then the team just did something stupid.
Of all the things the player union could fight for and they care about draft lottery to prevent tanking that doesn’t do anything to prevent tanking. Don’t want a international draft. And this prospect incentive bs.
Teams were doing all of that service time manipulation before, anyway, even the part about retaining rookie eligibility for the next year. If teams like the Pirates don’t think it’s worth it, then those prospects are no worse off than they were before.
However, many teams do think it’s worth it, and some of them never did much service time manipulation even before the new system.
FPG: “So yeah, PPI benefits the owners but also encourages even MORE service time manipulation.”
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You haven’t come anywhere near proving that service time manipulation is happening more across MLB due to prospect promotion incentives.
What is going on with the Red Sox is typical service time manipulation. Campbell signed an extension, so he was promoted sooner than Mayer and Anthony who haven’t signed extensions yet. This would likely happen with or without prospect promotion incentives to gain an extra year of control over players who haven’t signed an extension. This one example you cite supports that PPI has not reduced service time manipulation. It does not in any way support that service time manipulation is happening more than it ever has.
“The Mariners, in particular, had a history of manipulating service time with their best prospects including a controversy surrounding their handling of then-top prospect Jarred Kelenic.”
And as we’ve seen over the past few years, the Mariners talent evaluators were 100% correct in their assessment that Kelenic wasn’t ready for MLB pitching.
Can’t believe that comment has so many likes. Kelenic hasn’t developed as hoped but the Mariners 100% manipulated his service time and that was the point of that statement. The results are not the issue.
Exactly King of Cards. The guy with the 8th highest WAR of outfielders on his team should have been allowed to play from day 1 because he had a 4 next to his name in prospect rankings. Prospect Ranking > Stats and Production every time!
Again not the point. The Mariners executive said point blank they were manipulating his service time.
And that point doesn’t matter when manipulating his service time was the right thing to do in that situation.
Manipulating service time is never the right thing to do
Manipulating the time or not… he was not ready for prime time. It showed then and definitely never has improved, if anything has gotten worse.
That’s true but thats not the point.
Mather was responsible for setting hot dog prices, not player development. Whole thing was blown out of proportion by mariners fans (who are largely clueless as to how baseball works….if you’re a Cardinals fan you fortunately wouldn’t have to understand).
No effect. Same numbers being called up to start the season as in seasons past.
Some players are not yet ready to be called up. Others start the season up and then it is quite apparent they are not ready and get sent down. Many players manage to stay up but really aren’t ready and they struggle. I don’t think it is service time issues rather everyone developes at a different pace.
Yes, same numbers, Web, but we are seeing more 2nd tier prospect promotions while top tier are being held back. Boston is the perfect example here… Campbell up, Mayer and Anthony (#1 and #2), Campbell was ranked 3rd ( I think)..
After Campbell agreed to his extension, there was no service time to be gained by keeping him in the minors. Mayer and Anthony have not signed extensions and keeping them in the minors gets the Red Sox and extra year of team control before they hit free agency. That type of service time manipulation has been going on across MLB for years.
Good point. You have to wonder if the extension was worked out before the season.
Can you prove that? It seems like we’re seeing at least some more beginning of season promotions than we were before., even among the numbers of the ones that actually stick for the entire season and beyond.
Correct me if my memory is failing me, but all 3 of Shaw, G-Rod and Holliday had poor showings upon their initial callup. It didn’t appear to be manipulation and was, at least in my eyes, a legit effort to help the players improve. Lots of young kids get overwhelmed by their first taste of the majors and need a brief reset in the minors.
Also, the Pirates need to embrace George Costanza’s opposite theory. Whatever they think is the thing to do, do the opposite, because they seem to do pretty much everything wrong.
So what the Reds were 10 years ago?
Cant speak to Grayson Rodriguez, but Shaw and Holliday were aggressively promoted, at a young age, without that many games at AAA.
It’s pretty funny how many prospects who are being “service time manipulated” come up and suck because they aren’t ready.
Shaw was promoted after a big Spring Training performance where he looked like the best 3B in the org. And that was after a winter when the Cubs intentionally cleared room for him. Then he played poorly. I don’t think anyone gamed the system here.
And people were clamoring for Holliday’s promotion nearly a year before it actually happened. Everyone wants to see a teenager reach the bigs—it portends greatness.
The Cubs have manipulated the service time of a 3b in the past but it wasnt Shaw.
It worked out fine for KB. Not only did he get big Super Two arb salaries, but it also pushed his free agent platform year away from his mediocre pandemic season.
His free agency was delayed a year. It was clear service time manipulation.
Plus, free agents in general got shafter after that pandemic season, anyway.
Yes, it was clear service time manipulation for Bryant. We’re just saying that in hindsight waiting an extra year for free agency wasn’t actually that bad for him.
Who is we????
It was that bad. It delayed his free agency by a full year. Thats bad.
Apparently, your reading comprehensions sucks. Obviously, it’s what Bucket Number Six and I said above. To reiterate:
“It worked out fine for KB. Not only did he get big Super Two arb salaries, but it also pushed his free agent platform year away from his mediocre pandemic season.”
“Plus, free agents in general got shafted after that pandemic season, anyway.”
Don’t use someone else’s comments to try and justify yourself. Just don’t do it.
It was service time manipulation at its finest. All the other nonsense you said isn’t important.
What you just said is the nonsense.
First of all, there’s nothing wrong with agreeing with someone else’s comment while adding your own comment to add to the point. I only quoted it because you were too blind to see it the first time.
Second, both points are important and not nonsense at all. The Cubs played Bryant, but Bryant just happened to get lucky despite it. He may have still preferred free agency a year earlier, but the results weren’t nearly as bad as they usually are in his case. Although, he’s probably the only example (before the current PPI system) of a player who had his service time manipulated and it wasn’t terrible for him.
Every player in baseball prefers free agency a year earlier. It’s not about the results it’s about the Cubs intentions and that was to manipulate his service time. Thats the point not how it ended up working out later.
My biggest gripe with the current system is that it’s tied to the awards voting, which feels a bit flaky. But I don’t know what other objective measure could be used.
So far in 3 seasons with the PPI pick, there’s been little doubt about whether the player earned the placement in the awards they needed to earn their teams a draft pick.
2022 between J-Rod and Rutschman is probably the closest, although J-Rod should win for playing the whole season. In 2023, both Carroll and Henderson coasted to their ROY win. And Bobby Witt Jr. is the second-best player in the AL behind Aaron Judge.
The flaky thing to me is that the player needs to be on a top 100 player list for the team to win an extra draft pick which gives the media some power in the process as they establish the top 100 lists.
Oh yeah, definitely that also.
I wonder when we will see a team send a player down during their sophomore year who entered the season with 1.000 years of service time after they go through a marginal slump.
Probably pretty soon, depending on your definition of marginal.
Teams have many ways to manipulate service time and they can’t all be eliminated.
The easiest way would be to lower the requirement for a service year to something like 75 days. At that point, the use case for manipulation would be low. The period for delaying a promotion would be right around the trade deadline. Contenders would want their best guys up, and only rebuilders would wait a little longer.
No matter where you place the deadline, teams would just manipulate service time around that new deadline.
A more creative solution was needed, and between the draft pick incentives and the potential punishment of granting the extra service time anyway, this is the best solution we have so far.
I still think you manipulate service time anyway. The odds of the player winning ROY or being a MVP/Cy Young finalist in his pre-arb years are not good. But we already know A. J. Preller doesn’t do that (Tatis, Cronenworth, Merrill, etc).
Cronenworth was not a top prospect. Merrill was under current rules. Tatis I will give you that one.
They would have called Merrill up early even if it weren’t for the new rules.
Um, Rookie of the Year is specifically for a set of pre-arb players. Plus, they also risk giving up that year of service time anyway like with Skenes. Between the potential incentive and the potential disincentive, at least some of the teams do find it worth it.
The only way manipulating service time hurts you is if the player wins ROY. If he finishes in 2nd place you are in the exact same position as if you didn’t manipulate service time. The Padres saw this with Jackson Merrill.
So far I’d say it’s worked as intended. We can cite Bobby Witt Jr., Jackson Merrill, and Julio Rodriguez as cases where you can claim it helped prevent possible service time manipulation (although all 3 players signed mega extensions, so it’s a bit of a moot point in hindsight).
Carroll and Henderson were on track to be starters in their respective rookie seasons, so it had no impact on them. Chourio could have been a PPI-eligible prospect had he signed his extension a week later, which is probably why the Red Sox waited to extend Kristian Campbell until after his debut.
Skenes might be the only case of service time manipulation for a top prospect, but even that is a difficult case to make. He was just drafted months before, so those 10 starts in Triple-A might have been important in making sure he was ready.
It didn’t prevent anything on Merrill. Preller already doesn’t do the service time thing.
Adley was also an attempt at service time manipulation.
Meh
Marginal increase is better than no increase.
I think “service time manipulation” is very overblown. Fans, media, fantasy players, etc all want the next new shiny prospect, and its very easy to gripe about the front office “holding them down”. Even if you’re a fan who doesn’t even watch the minors.
I’m a Giants fan and there’s a segment of the fanbase online who is furious we haven’t called up Bryce Eldridge to replace LaMonte Wade. Eldridge is 20.
Jackson Holliday was 20 when people started accusing the Orioles of “manipulation”. Then they called him up… at age 20!… and guess what. He wasn’t ready.
Every situation is different. Kris Bryant is a good example of it happening. I think it’s happened less recently.
rhand – It depends on each individual situation. Sure some fans are irrationally impatient. In Holliday’s case, he had only 155 minor league games under his belt when he was promoted …. including only 28 games at AAA.
Now compare that to Roman Anthony who already has 286 minor league games including 76 games at AAA …. it’s absolutely absurd he hasn’t been promoted yet! The guy has a .965 OPS in AAA, he’s got nothing to gain by staying down there.
And if Anthony had agreed to an extension like Campbell did, Anthony would have been playing the entire season in the majors like Campbell has.
I voted no, but a soft no. I don’t think it’s been as dramatic as hoped.
Re: Matt Shaw – there’s no way the Cubs were starting Jon Berti at third for a month and giving Nicky Lopez any ABs whatsover to manipulate Shaw’s service time. He just stunk his first time around, like many prospects do, so they sent him down to try to get him his mojo back and like with many prospects, it might have done the trick. We’ll see.
It is having some effect. Prior to the rule, top prospects almost always got the Kris Bryant Treatment. Tatis is the main recent example where that did NOT happen. But now many prospects make Opening Day rosters.
I was under the impression that the Astros promoted Cam Smith early partly because of this incentive.
IMO the Astros started Cam right away in the majors to appease the fans after trading Tucker since Cam was the centerpiece of the trade
” The Mariners, in particular, had a history of manipulating service time with their best prospects including a controversy surrounding their handling of then-top prospect Jarred Kelenic.”
That is neither true nor fair. Kelenic wasn’t ready and time proved that to be true. He only had 92 PAs in AA when fans started calling for his promotion and suggested he was being ‘punished’ for refusing to sign an extension after he whined through his agent publicly.
Gilbert had just 9 starts at AA; Raleigh had 51 games at AAA before getting called up. Raleigh and Julio are still the only two hitting prospects that have proven to be developmental successes.
Taylor Trammell never dominated the minors and struggled upon his call-up after 320+ PAs.
I have my issues with ownership and the front office, but I would argue they have mostly promoted players early, especially pitchers .
Some front office guy admitted they were holding him back for service time reasons. If I remember that I don’t know why you have forgotten. I would have to look up the details but that happened.
Kevin Mathers suggested he would have found himself on the roster if he had signed an extension.
But Mathers had nothing to do with player personnel nor roster decisions, and the fact remains that he had just 92 PAs in AA
How does that suggest service time manipulation?
It doesn’t.
Even Julio had over 200 PAs in AA before making the club out of spring and he was/is far more talented.
I’ll add a little more….
there was some belief that without a minor-league season in 2020, that some players (prospects) may have benefited from MLB experience, rather than what was basically just practice.
Seattle tried that with Evan White following a premature extension.
It didn’t work.
Well why did that guy say that then?
He was bragging…Many fans were enamored with Jarred and wanted to believe he was ready. “Not our fault!”.
And I’m not suggesting they wouldn’t have promoted Kelenic prematurely. But you’re missing the point.
You can’t call it service time manipulation when a player barely got his feet wet in AA.
The point is the executive said something publicly that most teams think privately. He screwed up and got caught.
He didn’t resign because of what he said about Kelenic. It was the racist comments that did him in. There was an incident with a female employee before that which certainly didn’t help his cause.
And keep in mind, he has no baseball background. He’s a businessman. He had nothing to do with the on-field decisions.
But believe whatever you want. I’m still waiting for someone to offer proof that Kelenic was actually ready for MLB.
In fact, I’m still waiting for someone to offer proof that he’s ready for MLB right now.
@Stevil I agree Kelenic wasn’t ready but Kevin Mather straight up admitted that service time was a factor in them waiting to call him up. They can both be true.
I already addressed the circumstances.
There’s a difference between service time manipulation and a premature promotion. Mather may not know the difference, but it was never about stealing an extra year. They wanted to extend him. It was about getting him on the field a season earlier rather than running drills at a practice facility.
If there had been a minor-league season, a premature promotion wouldn’t have been a conversation at all.
This isn’t a defense of Kevin Mather nor the Mariner front office, either. Mather’s comments reflected poorly onthe organization, but that wasn’t service time manipulation.
Why do you think there wasn’t a grievance by the players’ union?
Nutting would much rather save two weeks of (rookie level) pay than get a first round pick.
So, still a win in his books.
The main problem with the PPI is that it can’t be managed in any reliable sort of way. If it feels random, teams won’t incorporate it into their decision making. Most of the very best prospects don’t even trigger the condition for the rewards, regardless of when they were promoted. And a bunch of legit prospects aren’t even included because some public prospect analysts didn’t rank them highly enough.
And that’s not me disparaging BA et al. They do great work, but they’re outsiders. They’re at a window with a good view of the inside, but they can’t see everything.
The rule as written incentivizes teams to keep players down longer so that, once promoted, they can win awards in their first 2 or 3 seasons. It penalizes teams that allow a rookie to play through their growth phase.
Maybe, but if you keep a player in the minors too long, they may fall of the top 100 player lists and be ineligible to get their team and extra draft pick if they win an award.
Did you forget about the Rookie of the Year Award? It’s much more likely that a prospect will finish top 2 for that award than he would challenge for MVP and Cy Young within his first 3 years.
Yeah and a 24 year old debuting after 2 full years raking at AA and AAA is more likely to win a RoY award than a 23 year old promoted mid year. It encourages teams to wait until players are at their prime before playing them. It won’t matter much but I don’t see a single scenario in which a team will rush a prospect here.
While I get the “incentive” that the current collective bargaining agreement tried to correct the “service time manipulation” issue, I think a better way to address it is to maybe award teams that let prospects reach super 2 status. It avoids random things like ROL,MVP or CY voting and rewards teams for truly rewarding players with service time. One less year of service pre arbitation = one supplemental draft pick. Everybody wins. Just my thoughts.
There is one thing I would change about PPI and that is if a player like Jackson Chourio or Colt Keith sign a deal before taking a swing in the majors that they are ineligible for PPI.
The other thing I would also give out a draft pick if a player in their pre arb years wins a silver slugger or Gold Glove.
Your first 1 is already the case.
Only the pirates can screw a situation so bad to not get an extra pick AND lose skenes to the dodgers 1 year sooner
Mariners: you’re not ready
Kelenic’s career: has proven them right
What Bryant has done to teams in free agency is far worse than what the Cubs did to him
I was never a hater of service time ‘manipulation’, which more accurately could be labeled roster construction manipulation…and it was smart.
Most kids struggle when they first get called up. Even if they quickly right the ship, the team ends up with a full season of average production that they have to pay premium money for down the road…and loses a full year of control.
Steven Kwan is an example, although he hit the ground running immediately, which is not normal. He has been a 4 WAR player. This is his fourth year, and first year of arby.
He’s making $4 mil, instead of the minimum, had the Guardians held him back two months. His salary will bump about $4 mil in each of the next two years, after which he is a FA.
For his six years, Cleveland will pay him around $27 mil. 1+1+1+4+8+12
Had he been held back until June his rookie season, the Guards would have paid him around $28 mil for seven seasons. 1+1+1+1+4+8+12.
Those first two months his rookie year will end up costing Cleveland $12 mil over six years, plus losing him a year early. That seventh year, if they had it, would have actually cost the Guards nothing more than the league minimum.
Even with a rare rookie that begins his career at full stride, $12 mil plus the loss of a season is a steep price to pay for two months. Its even steeper for a small revenue franchise.
In hindsight, I don’t think Bryant would’ve actually appreciated hitting free agency a year early in that particular offseason. In that 2020-21 offseason, free agents got shafted across the board when they were thrown under the bus by the MLBPA refusing to take further pay cuts during the short pandemic season of 2020.
Bubba Chandler, unless he moves back to shortstop, will not solve what what ails the Pirates.
I don’t think Khris Bryant needed any help getting max pay for his services.
It’s better than nothing. As clubs have shown, until arbitrators stop believing the farcical garbage (see Kris Bryant case) sent their way by clubs who pretend service time manipulation doesn’t exist, they will continue to manipulate as often as possible with barely a fig leaf to conceal it. And lest we forget because of its open discussion in the industry as if it were a legit “strategy”, service time manipulation is a CBA violation. But with even the most obvious grievances falling on deaf arbitrator ears, front offices will continue to find ways to violate the CBA with impunity.