The Baseball Writers Association of America is announcing the finalists for the 2025 awards tonight. Astros right-hander Hunter Brown is one of the American League Cy Young finalists, alongside Tarik Skubal of the Tigers and Garrett Crochet of the Red Sox. Since Brown was eligible for the Prospect Promotion Incentive, the Astros will receive an extra pick after the first round of the 2026 draft.
The 2022-2026 collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA introduced measures to try to reduce service time manipulation. Previously, teams would often hold their top prospects down in the minors until a few weeks into the start of a season, thus gaining an extra year of club control over the player.
Under the new CBA, if a player is on two of the three top 100 prospect lists from Baseball America, ESPN and MLB Pipeline, then his club promotes him early enough in a season to earn a full service year, that player becomes PPI eligible. If the player wins Rookie of the Year or finishes in the top three of Cy Young or MVP voting in his pre-arbitration seasons, he earns the club an extra draft pick. Each player can only earn a club one extra pick total.
Brown got called up to the majors late in 2022 but maintained rookie status going into the following season, featuring prominently on top prospect lists. The Astros haven’t optioned him to the minors since then, so he’s been a mainstay on their roster for the past three full seasons. By being up for the full 2023 season, he became PPI eligible.
He has been PPI-eligible for the past three years but he didn’t receive any awards votes in 2023 or 2024. Here in 2025, he made 31 starts for Houston, logging 185 1/3 innings. He allowed only 2.43 earned runs per nine. His 28.3% strikeout rate, 7.8% walk rate and 48.1% ground ball rate were all above average.
He will likely finish third in the voting behind Skubal and Crochet but it’s enough for the Astros to get a bonus pick in 2026. That’s a nice bonus for them, as the club’s farm system isn’t especially well regarded at the moment.
Julio Rodríguez, Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson each earned their clubs bonus picks by winning Rookie of the Year. Bobby Witt Jr. didn’t win Rookie of the Year but earned the Royals an extra pick by finishing in the top three of MVP voting in 2024. Drake Baldwin is a finalist for National League Rookie of the Year in 2025 and can net Atlanta an extra pick if he ultimately wins the award.
Photo courtesy of William Purnell, Imagn Images
That’s cool actually, this system is abit convoluted but stuff like this will make it work.
Congratulations Houston!
“Prospect Promotion Incentive”
[look inside]
Incentive regarding a guy with over three years of service time.
Yea that’s part of it, if you call them up so they get that full year of service you buy the chance not only for ROY but something like this as well, it actually makes sense
But he has 3 years of service already so how does that work?
It’s another incentive to the team, if they finish top 3 in CY or MVP you get the pick. Gives teams another incentive beyond just the top 2 ROY
He only had two years of service at the beginning of the recently completed 2025 season.
Now I understand his question better, Lloyd is right.
Red: Once a player has met PPI criteria they carry that status for all of their pre-arbitration years. So teams have three years for a player to potentially net them a pick.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
I get this for rookies, but idk how I feel about it for a guy who already has as much service time as him. He’s pitched at the Major League level every year since 2022, regardless of “total accumulated service time”. You could even argue the Astros manipulated his options to get him to pitch across 4 different years but only amass 2 years of service time yet they’re getting rewarded a draft pick for doing so lmao. What’s the cut off here for these things? When they’re arbitration eligible? I don’t hate the idea of PPI, but I don’t think it was rewarded properly here, and it definitely went towards a team that really doesn’t need any additional help lol
He has (a bit over) 3 years of service now (note that the baseball reference service time number is as of Jan 1 of this year and does not account for service time accrued this year). The PPI incentive triggers if the player receives the relevant awrds voting in any of the player’s pre-arb seasons, of which this was Brown’s last (he is arb-eligible this offseason). This is by the book: Astros promoted him on day 1 in 2023 when he was still a prospect, which made them eligible to receive the PPI pick for the award voting this year.
Having players potentially net a team a pick over three years as opposed to one is a good incentive to promote those players. If teams only had one shot (and realistically how often does a rookie ever win the Cy Young or MVP?) I imagine you’d see a return to the old system of service time manipulation as that extra year of service time would be worth more than the chance at one pick.
Point it to create an incentive for a team not to stash a player for most of the season. The player loses a year of arbitration. This way the team and player win. Same will be for Astros Smith over the next three years.
Glad he finished in top 3. I don’t think the winner will receive all first place votes.
Always fascinating when you have to compensate wealthy team owners to not keeping young talents on the farm to suppress their salaries..perhaps even hurting your own team’s chances on the field.
I mean…..say what you will but service time manipulation was smart, why would I sacrifice an extra year of control on a guy? Good will? If im controlling a guys service time he is a top prospect type who is gonna be set for life with the cash he will make. Kinda easy to justify TBH
Losing a year of a player hurts a team’s chances a lot more than losing a six weeks of a player. Yes that year is down the road but GMs have to think both long and short term. Service time manipulation made sense for every team regardless of payroll.
It’s not even 6 weeks for the extra year of team control.
In 2015, Kris Bryant was called up 7 games into the season to get exactly 171 days of service time. 172 days is the cutoff for a full year of service time.
Baldwin deserves the rookie of the year in the national league.
“…the club’s farm system isn’t especially well regarded at the moment.”
Gee whiz, what could have caused that to happen?
Wow, Fried got zero respect. I guess they wanted an RHP in the top 3 with Skubal and Crochet.
Well Fried didn’t have a better season than Brown, so.
Crochet should take it, considering the environment in which he pitches, but I really like Brown. Skubal pitches in the Grand Canyon and the subpar central.
Yankee fans would have dumped him after the 2023 season
They have no tolerance for anything less than an all star appearance every single season