In MLB.com’s latest Rookie of the Year rankings, Athletics infielders occupy both the first and second positions. Shortstop Jacob Wilson currently retains top spot on the list, while first baseman Nick Kurtz is putting on a fearsome charge, moving ahead of Cam Smith of the Houston Astros and Carlos Narvaez of the Boston Red Sox into second position in the latest update.
If either one wins – as they are currently on track to do – it will be a source of much consolation for the Athletics, whose first post-Oakland season has been undercut by team-wide pitching problems. However, due to a provision in MLB’s latest Collective Bargaining Agreement, it will actually matter which of the Athletics’ young starlets wins the award.
Specifically, if Wilson wins, the Athletics will gain an extra asset in the form of a draft pick.
New Provision Designed To Help Young Stars
The 2022 CBA introduced a new provision called the Prospect Promotion Incentive (hereafter, the PPI). As the name suggests, the intent of the provision is to incentivize MLB teams to promote their prospects to the Major League level, rather than holding them back in the minors to manipulate the service time rules.
Examples of Majors-ready prospects spending longer than is needed in the minors so as to be kept out of arbitration for one extra year are too numerous to mention, and is in fact so common that it has its own Wikipedia page. What the PPI set out to do is diminish that incentive by adding another one.
The PPI achieves this by granting a team an extra draft pick if one of their rookies accrues one full year of service time, before either winning or heavily contending for a major postseason award. Specifically, if that player wins his leagueâs Rookie of the Year award, or places in the top three in either MVP or Cy Young voting in any season prior to qualifying for arbitration, the team will receive an extra pick in the compensation round, as long as:
- The player is still with the team he debuted with at the time of the accolade,
- The player involved had appeared on at least two of the three Top 100 Prospect rankings released by MLB Pipeline, Baseball America and ESPN.
- The players must be rookie-eligible and have fewer than 60 days of MLB service across prior seasons.
Athletics Spoiled For Quality Hitters
Caveats (2) and (3) above are what makes Wilson eligible for the PPI pick, but not Kurtz.
Wilson made his majors debut at the tail end of 2024, appearing in 28 games of that lost season and recording 103 plate appearances. Kurtz, by contrast, did not make his majors debut until April 23rd of this season – barely three weeks after opening night. And it was not because he was unready.
A year of service is defined by the CBA as being equal to 172 days in the majors, and having been called up only in late April, Kurtz cannot get to that threshold in 2025. Wilson, however, will. And he was not up for 60 days in 2024, thus retaining rookie eligibility in 2025.
Therefore, put simply, if Jacob Wilson wins the American League’s Rookie of the Year award in 2025, the Athletics will get an extra 2026 draft pick. If anyone else does – including their own Nick Kurtz – they will not. But even if they do not win the pick, the Athletics will still be winning – because they have Nick Kurtz.
Athletics Have Themselves A Pete Alonso Type
In subjecting Kurtz to the time-honored service time manipulation approach, the Athletics may save themselves a few million dollars in the coming years. It is no small saving to push back an arbitration season in this way for players of his caliber, and has been a common practice for a reason. Yet it may cost the team now, as, despite Wilson’s brilliance to begin the season, Kurtz’s lightning-quick breakout as a power hitter could well see him take the Rookie of the Year title.
After another two-hit performance in the Athletics’ first game of the second half, including a triple, Kurtz has raised his batting average on the season to .262, alongside a mammoth .567 slugging percentage, punctuated by 17 home runs in only 210 at-bats. They have often been timely bombs, too, including back-to-back walk-offs in June that put his name out there for any casual fans who had not previously been looking.
Kurtz’s OPS of .903 and his OPS+ of 146 tell the tale of how good he has been at the plate so early. While the fact that Wilson plays the more important defensive position of shortstop might offset any gap between the two at the plate, he is the one plateauing from a hot start.
Kurtz, by contract, is only getting better. So good, in fact, that he might cost his team a draft pick.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post It Actually Matters Which Athletics Player Wins Rookie of the Year appeared first on Heavy Sports.