Breaking Down The MLB Top 100 Prospect Incentive Proposal

But because of that, including a Top 100 Prospects designation in the incentive seems unnecessary. To get a sense of how many players would be affected, we looked back at the rookie of the year balloting from 2010 to present. Of the 72 players to rank in the top three of Rookie of the Year balloting since 2010, 54 (75%) were Top 100 Prospects coming into that season. There were a few players (like Jose Iglesias and Jaime Garcia) who had ranked previously as Top 100 Prospects but not in the year before they landed ROY votes. For these purposes they are considered as not making the Top 100.

Of the 18 players who weren’t in the Top 100, five (Luis Garcia, Cristian Javier, John Means, Devin Williams and Jake Cronenworth) are still quite early in their MLB careers. Of the other 13, six (Danny Valencia, Vance Worley, Matt Shoemaker, Matt Duffy, Jung-Ho Kang and Tyler Naquin) were either non-tendered, released or had their contracts sold to other teams during the first five years of their MLB careers. It’s fair to say that service time considerations didn’t play a role in the roster decisions on any of those six players.

The other seven either reached free agency without being released/non-tendered or had their contracts sold or are on pace to do so. Trey Mancini and Paul DeJong so far seem destined to play through the entirety of their arbitration years and into free agency without being non-tendered. Jacob deGrom turned into one of the best pitchers in the game. Iglesias, Wade Miley, Garcia and Mark Trumbo all reached MLB free agency.