You’ve probably heard the wonderful news: Bobby Witt Jr. is a finalist for MVP! This, frankly, is just hype padding as the votes for MLB’s awards have already been cast; MLB is simply revealing the top-3 in any order.
Will he win? Probably not, if we’re being honest. Regardless of the outcome, however, Bobby accomplishing a top-3 MVP finish gives the Royals a bonus draft pick for 2025. This is thanks to the recently-introduced Prospect Promotion Incentive, which essentially rewards teams for fielding their top prospects early.
What is the Prospect Promotion Incentive?
If a PPI-eligible player completes a full year of service as a rookie, then either wins Rookie of the Year or places in the top-3 of an MVP or Cy Young in their first three years of service, that player’s team gets a bonus draft pick after the first round. PPI eligibility is only given to prospects that appear in at least two pre-season top-100 prospect rankings by Baseball America, ESPN or MLB; Maikel Garcia or Vinnie Pasquantino, for example, wouldn’t yield the Royals a bonus pick even if they won MVP this season because they weren’t on those lists and didn’t play a full season in their first year.
Bobby, on the other hand, checks all the boxes. He was unanimously considered a top prospect going into the 2022 season and he made his Major League debut that Opening Day. Three years later, in his final year of PPI eligibility, he placed in the top-3 for MVP. For this, the Royals will get a pick immediately after the first round of the 2025 Draft.
The 2024 Draft had two PPI picks placed at #31 and #32, with each of them worth just under $3 million in slot value. It can be assumed the Royals’ PPI pick will be there. Since KC made the playoffs, their regular draft pick is probably going to be in the 20’s as opposed to the top-10 they’ve had for six years in a row, making the boost in pool money extremely helpful. Some notable players that have been drafted 31st or 32nd in the last decade include Shane McClanahan, Will Smith (the catcher), Ke’Bryan Hayes and Michael Busch.
Adding in the Competitive Balance pick the Royals always get (which should be between the second and third rounds unless they trade it again), the next draft should inject another strong wave of talent into the organization despite their top pick being much lower than in previous years.
Why does this rule even exist?
To put it bluntly, it’s a way of correcting an injustice within the sport. On top of getting through the multi-tiered minor league system, MLB players have to play six full seasons in order to reach free agency. If that isn’t hard enough, there’s an extremely exploitable loophole in how “full” seasons are counted. An explanation of how MLB’s service time works can be read on MLB’s website, but the exploit is easier to explain: just have a player in the minors for like three weeks. That’s it.
A player being optioned or held in the minors for just 20 days can bring a season down from full to partial, and it makes a world of difference. This means that player has to wait another year to reach free agency. Brady Singer is a victim of this; although the Royals called him up immediately in 2020 and had him pitch the entire year and the next, he was optioned in early 2022. He still pitched 153 innings and was the best player on the team that year, but his 20-day absence from the majors pushed back his would-be free agency until after 2026. If not for that, this upcoming season would be Singer’s contract year.
There are more egregious examples of service time manipulation. It’s likely that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was the inspiration for this new incentive. Going into 2019, Vladdy was not only the unanimous #1 prospect in the league, but was given a mythical 80-grade on his hit tool, making him one of the most acclaimed prospects we’ve ever seen. Yet, the Blue Jays kept him in AAA until around the end of that April because… well, frankly, because they could.
It’s an unfortunate push-and-pull with sports. You want your team to do what is necessary to win, and usually, the fun option isn’t the smartest option. Objectively, it makes sense to manipulate service time with players like Vladdy because they provide high on-field value for much less money than a player acquired in free agency. But fans don’t often root for the objective, logical and optimal way to run a team. They simply want to watch the best players they feel are available. Blue Jays fans understood why Vladdy was left off the team, but it didn’t make them any less upset.
The Prospect Promotion Incentive is aptly named: it’s an incentive. It doesn’t solve the issue of service time manipulation, but it at least throws a bone to teams not resorting to it and having their faith pay off. It would lessen the blow of Bobby leaving for free agency after 2028 instead of 2029 if the Royals waited to call him up and never extended him. Fortunately, Bobby’s in KC for the long haul anyway, probably because he doesn’t have a reason to hate it. It pays off to have a good working relationship.
The Most Valuable Player Award will be announced on November 21. Matt Quatraro was also announced as a finalist for Manager of the Year, to be announced on the 19th, and Seth Lugo is a finalist for the Cy Young Award, to be announced on the 20th.