In the not-too-distant past, it was relatively rare for organizations to break camp with their very best prospects on the roster. It still happened at times, but MLB's service time structure was set up such that keeping a top prospect in the minors for even two weeks to begin the season effectively ensured that he'd be controllable for seven years rather than the standard six. There were obvious exceptions to this thinking -- Atlanta fans surely remember Jason Heyward breaking camp as a 20-year-old and belting a three-run homer on Opening Day -- but there were far more cases of keeping a player in the minors to buy the extra year. Kris Bryant, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer and others were all called to the majors just when they'd spent enough time in the minors to give their clubs an extra year of control. There was nothing inherently nefarious about the gambit; teams were operating within the collectively bargained rules and making business decisions.
The 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement sought to implement some real incentives for teams to bring their best players north to begin the season, however, and by and large they've been effective. With the Prospect Promotion Incentives (PPI), any prospect who appears on two recognized top-100 lists and is called up early enough to earn a full service year can net his team a bonus draft pick, either in that season's Rookie of the Year voting or in MVP/Cy Young voting over the next three seasons.
There's also a disincentive to holding a player down. For those same qualified top prospects, a top-two finish in either league's Rookie of the Year voting will net a full year of major league service time, regardless of when they were called up. Said prospects still have around 90% of a season in such instances, which is more than enough time to turn in a ROY-worthy performance.
Teams now know that holding a player down for 15 days or so might lead to him getting a full year of service anyhow and comes with the disadvantage of rendering that player ineligible for future PPI picks. As such, it's become increasingly common for touted prospects to break camp on their teams' rosters.
With that in mind, and with fewer than two weeks to go until Opening Day, it seems worth running through a slate of top prospects who could factor into their teams' Opening Day plans.
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Isn’t one of the obstacles to Gage’s arrival – I won’t include Civale because he’s a proxy anyways – possibly heading to TJS? I thought Lopez was going to see Dr Nick…
Excellent work Steve. Thank you.
One suggestion, if you do this again: incude Spring stats in every player write-up. That data would make this piece even more valuable for readers participating in March fantasy drafts.
Thanks agian and well done.
Good comment and if I may add this, I didn’t realize this until recently,
but the baseball reference page for each player has a Tab for 2026 spring training stats for each guy.
I love that and perhaps it helps with what you’re looking for?
Spring training stats are nearly meaningless.
For veteran, established players I would agree. For the players that Steve is identifying in this article, you’re incorrect. A good spring will make the difference between making a team and starting in the minors. Moreover, if you know anything about fantasy, you’d understand, that’s the difference between drafting a guy in late rounds or not.
For guys like Wetherholt, DeLauter, Benge, McGonicle and Lowder “spring stats” are far from meaningless.
gbs42, correct.., nearly meaningless.
I can’t help but laugh at the Pirates, who are so cheap that they tried to manipulate an extra year of control out of Skenes anyway, only for it to backfire on them spectacularly. Skenes got his full year of service time anyway, and the Pirates didn’t get the PPI draft pick that they otherwise would’ve gotten for him.
Except that’s not what happened. There were concerns that Skenes was overworked his last year at LSU, so they wanted to limit his innings as a rookie. As a result, they basically had him skip spring training outside of the breakout game and start his ramp up once the minor league season started. That way he’d get an extra break before the year started and wouldn’t have to be shut down in September.
I’m sure they didn’t mind that it let them manipulate service time too, but it was actually a pretty good plan for protecting the guy’s arm. And yes, they got burned by bringing him up in May, but they were actually competitive through August that year. The Pirates FO makes many mistakes, but this wasn’t one of them.
On the cusp of rotisserie leaguesv freeze dates, this is enuinely useful information. Thanks for reading the tea leaves.
Henderson seems likely to be in the rotation start of the year
I think most people are looking at oh, this prospect is one year or control or one draft pick. It’s not that easy, so first they must be a top 100 prospect on at least 2/3 of MLB Pipeline, Baseball America, and ESPN, so if you see a prospect that’s a top 100 on say MLB Pipeline, make sure he’s on ESPN or BA too, but it shouldn’t be too big of a problem.
Then, you have to be called up within the first two weeks of Opening Day, that’s fine too. But the real requirement is to win the ROY or finish in top 3 of Cy Young or MVP in his pre-arb years. There’s a ton of players that could win the ROY in both leagues, like Trey Yesavage, Carter Jensen, Kevin McGonigle, Japan signings Tatsuya Imai and Kazuma Okamato, and more in the AL. NL has guys like Bubba Chandler, JJ Wetherholt, Sal Stewart, Nolan McLean, and more that could in the NL.
MVP or Cy Young wise, it’s not easy. For the MVP, there’s Yordan Alvarez (if he can stay healthy), Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge, Jose Ramirez, Bobby Witt Jr, Julio Rodriguez, etc in the AL, Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber, and surely more dark horses. Paul Skenes in the NL, soon to join NL Dodgers Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Cristopher Sanchez, etc. AL still has Hunter Brown, Garrett Crochet, Bryan Woo and Logan Gilbert look like they are ready to compete for the Cy Young, Jacob deGrom, MacKenzie Gore is a big time breakout candidate, if Eovaldi can stay healthy he’s really good, Joe Ryan could reach new heights, it’s not easy.
Even if your Konnor Griffin or Kevin McGonigle, your guaranteed a PPI. Just saying it’s harder than it seems.
Andrew Painter (PHL-SP) is a dark horse contender for NL ROY. I say dark horse because his numbers at AAA last year were pretty bad. However, he was coming off TJ surgery and supposedly initials results after TJ are not always a good barometer for gauging future success. If you are a risk taker, check out the odds on those betting sites. Last I looked, Painter was something like 35-1.
One pitch away from another injury.
Anybody else unable to login (or nothing changes when I do?) with the new APP update?
He’s probably not listed because he isn’t a true ‘prospect’ (no. 9 White Sox prospect), but I think Sam Antonacci has shown enough in the WBC for Italy to be considered for opening day roster. Meidroth probably holds him off as starter at 2nd and there are a TON of Sox players who are out of options so they’ll probably test Antonacci at AAA first, but I think he’ll be up relatively early and make some impact this year.
DET SS John Peck