The 2025 PPI Breakdown You Were Too Afraid to Ask For
Julio Rodríguez receiving news of his AL ROY award surrounded by family and friends in 2022, earning the Seattle Mariners an additional first round, PPI pick - https://x.com/JRODshow44/status/1592322522980052992
One of my favorite parts of being a baseball fan is playing GM. I remember being a kid watching the 2003 ALCS with my dad, and, God forbid, Manny struck out – we were ready to trade him until his next mega-chill, mammoth blast. On the flip side, in winter, we’re making bacon egg and cheese bagels and I’m warming my blood with the Hot Stove rumors of the Red Sox getting Schilling or someone big like that. Some naysayers to ‘sportsball’ might scoff at fandom as bread and circuses, but overreacting and dreaming of future glory – it’s all pretty human, isn’t it? We just happen to enjoy how this indelible hopefulness — the same hopefulness of getting the yoga pose right, of seeing daffodils in spring — shows up in baseball.
For us fans, we love big splashes in free agency, and the subtler, midseason fleeces that crop up two years later in the form of a breakout star, some little-known prospect with a technical profile (e.g. Michael Brantley) that snuck through as a trade piece at the deadline. The misdirection and feigned disinterest or, conversely, planted headlines of “prospects we’ll never part with!” are all part of the politics of wheeling and dealing. This game of arbitrage – the noticing of value in the margins that others overlook – that’s the game of thrones that GMs play. If you have any love for strategy, chess, or just baseball, the sharp, dopamine-fueled inhale of this off-field game is breath-taking.
Adding to this game of GMs, one of the best outcomes from the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, or, CBA, was PPI, the Prospect Promotion Initiative. If a player is PPI-eligible, and they win Rookie of the Year, or place in the top 3 voting for MVP or Cy Young, their team is granted an additional first round draft pick.
First, let’s get PPI defined: it’s a market incentive for organizations to move their players along (so players can get MLB money faster) while GMs get a fun gamble to get more draft picks. Everybody’s happy – hence this policy getting cooked up at the CBA. PPI reminds me of playing Settlers of Catan and using your turn to buy a development card: it may be a risk to lose a turn, but the payoff can get you a victory point. In baseball, similarly, you risk losing not only a year of pre-arbitration (league minimum salary) of a star prospect, you risk stunting or even hurting the development of that player, diminishing their return if you need them and their prospect ranking in a trade package. Sometimes, the unknown remaining the unknown is more valuable in a game like baseball. As we’ve covered before, MLB prospects aren’t like NFL draft picks – they aren’t expected to plug and play and win a championship their first year. PPI is a way to incentivize the hope that they can.
What’s it trying to fix?
Championships aside, overall, PPI is there to disincentivize the team-friendly strategy of tincturing out prospect playing time – a little here, a little here, but just enough to not trip the wire of their arbitration clock, so teams get more years of control at bargain prices. The key, here, is understanding MLB service time. With 162 games over a season that lasts about 187 days, 172 of those days on an MLB active roster will earn you one year. IL stints count towards it, too, and three of those years gets you into negotiating for bigger salary ranges. The classic study is Kris Bryant, who, under Theo Epstein’s shrewdly-ran Cubs organization, was promoted to the majors in 2015, perfectly-dated to total Bryant one day shy of the requisite 172 that would earn him a full year of service time. He won ROY in 2015 and then won NL MVP in 2016 as he helped the Cubs to their first World Series win in over 100 years. He was making $652,000. Still, the Cubs retained five more years of control, instead of the four if his ROY year had counted. In short, once you’re on the MLB active roster, the day count taxi meter starts rolling, but once you’re optioned back to the minors, the clock stops.
Theo Epstein at the Wrigley Field warning track - https://pursuitofpennants.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/theo-epstein.jpg
Bryant’s case was a lighting rod for the 2022 CBA, which yielded PPI as part of a fix. In addition to PPI, there’s now a pre-arbitration bonus pool that splits up $50 million to the top 100 pre-arb players in terms of WAR. Further, no matter when a player is called up, if they finish first or second in ROY voting, they get their full, first season of MLB service time.
Eligibility
Requirements include: you have to have under 60 days of service time entering your rookie season, you have to break camp or be called up within 2 weeks of spring training, and you have to be pre-arbitration. That last bit may throw you off as it did me, but think of it as the final gate, not the first one, meaning, you retain your PPI eligibility if you initially qualify, through every year up to arbitration. Arbitration is usually after 3 years of MLB service time, but under 6, where a player can negotiate for a higher-than-league-minumum contract.
There’s a lot of articles out there that break PPI down, but I found myself getting confused as eligibility felt ostensibly like a Goldilocks problem. It looked like some players were around too long, others too short, and some that narrowly missed their window by a couple dozen games. There are many exceptions, so let’s work it out, simply. For example, Jacob Wilson, the Athletics’ rookie who is a clear front-runner for AL ROY, is not PPI eligible, but Astros’ pitcher Hunter Brown is, even though his debut year was 2022. Jasson Domínguez, the Yankees rookie, is also not eligible. The key is this: there is a difference between rookie and PPI status. Time on the IL counts against PPI, but not against being a rookie. So when Wilson only played 38 games in 2024, he was still hanging around on the IL long enough to get past the 60 day mark to qualify for PPI – a terrible miss for the A’s organization. So, when he took the field this spring, he had passed his PPI rookie status but not his MLB rookie status. Meanwhile, Hunter Brown entered 2022 late enough to both remain a rookie and not rack up too much service time before 2023 opening day. Being in his third year of pre-arbitration, this is his last shot to reap the rewards of PPI eligibility.
Paul Skenes, for example, was not eligible in 2024 despite winning both the NL ROY award and placing in the top 3 of NL Cy Young voting. The Pirates didn’t call him up to their roster within the PPI-requisite, 2-week range of breaking camp in spring. By the time 2024 ended, Skenes had played a full, rookie season. In other words, his PPI eligibility was spoiled by timing.
Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays - https://www.si.com/collectibles/inside-the-hobby/record-mlb-debut-patch-sale-junior-caminero-1-1-sells-for-66-000
Another good case study is Junior Caminero. Currently, he’s tearing it up in his first full season in the majors, hitting 21 homers and slugging .508 before the break. He’s in the top-10 MVP betting odds for AL MVP. Yet, he’s not eligible for ROY as he passed the 45 day threshold for being on an active roster back in 2024. But why isn’t he PPI eligible? Initially, I was confused, because Caminero checked every PPI-eligibility box: he was a top-rated prospect (number 1 in MLB pipeline overall), was pre-arbitration, and, even with 10 (2023) + 48 (2024) MLB service days, wasn’t he under the 60 day service threshold for PPI status going into 2025? Then it hit me: he isn’t starting 2025 as a rookie. He accrued 10 days of MLB service time in 2023, but was called up prior to his rookie-status, August “target” date, which in 2024, for Caminero, would be August 26th. This was the date that would ensure he flew under the 45 days to get a crack at both ROY and PPI eligibility (up to three years of it!) headed into 2025. Yet, he was called up a week too soon. The Rays decided they needed him to help fledgling Tampa bats in 2024. Caminero exists in a liminal, service time no-man’s-land where in effect, he was never a rookie, as far as PPI is concerned. In short, if you don’t kick off your career with a full Rookie season, you lose your status. It’s not just about day counts; it’s about when those day counts started, as well. In my opinion, this was a big miss by the Rays, who were already hurting from several starting pitchers injuries in 2024 that made a playoff run far from guaranteed.
Junior Caminero, Baseball Reference https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/caminju01.shtml
PPI Picks in 2025
With a glance at ESPN odds, here’s the breakdown, in order, of who could earn their team an extra first-round pick this year:
American League:
Cy Young: Hunter Brown
ROY: Nick Kurtz, Cam Smith, Jac Caglianone, Roman Anthony
MVP: None
National League:
Cy Young: None in top-10 odds (but potentially the ROY candidates)
ROY: Jacob Misiorowski, Drake Baldwin, Chase Burns
MVP: None
Jac Caglianone celebrating his home run during Game 2 of NCAA College World Series in 2023 -
Some honorable mentions are Wyatt Langford and Dylan Crews, who could tear it up in the second half, with Wyatt eligible at MVP and Crews for ROY or MVP. In the case of the AL Cy Young, Hunter Brown is behind Tarik Skubal and Garret Crochet, both of whom are ineligible, and in the case of ROY, Nick Kurtz and company are well-behind Jacob Wilson, who is batting an incredible .335 as of this writing and starting at shortstop for the American league All-Stars. I’m eager to see how Caglianone and Roman Anthony come out of the gate after the break. They have a real shot with star power that waxes towards legend potential. Jacob Misiorowski is already becoming a starter-by-appointment – a guy so nasty and fun to watch that when your team plays the Brewers, you pull up the schedule and count on your fingers when his next start is before you buy the tickets. Keep an eye on Cam Smith, who, despite playing the third-fewest games in the minors before cracking the majors, is currently batting .291/.359/.445 with an .804 OPS as the clean-up hitter for the 1st place Astros.
Cam Smith, Astros RF, receiving news in the team clubhouse that he made the Astros Opening Day roster from his mother - https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/astros-prospects-family-surprises-opening-day-roster-announcement/story?id=120169688
It’s safe to say that we’re spoiled this year with so many stars of tomorrow contending today for big prizes. With pitching, we talk about the game within the game, and the game within or between at-bats. With PPI, we add a new dimension to the game around the game, another abstraction level to set our sights on as we dream of dynasties. It should be a thrilling 2025 for baseball, and the young players that get to shine and be compensated for their time.
