Hunter Brown may have been the afterthought behind Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal and Boston Red Sox lefty Garrett Crochet when the American League Cy Young award finalists were announced, but in the eyes of the Houston Astros, he’s already won big.
Brown’s finalist finish triggers the Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) reward in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, giving Houston an extra pick after the first round in the 2026 draft. For a club that has thinned out its farm system to keep a long contention window open, that pick is a real asset.
Brown's qualification
Under the 2022–26 CBA, a club that promotes a top prospect in time for a full service year can earn a bonus pick if that player later wins Rookie of the Year or finishes top three for MVP or Cy Young before arbitration. Brown kept rookie status into 2023, was on multiple top-100 lists, and was up for the full season, so he qualified as a “top prospect.”
He did not place in the awards in 2023 or 2024, but his 2025 leap put him on the Cy Young ballot and pushed Houston over the PPI threshold.
Each player can only earn his team one extra pick, and Brown just cashed it.
Unmissable season
While he may not have shown Skubal-like dominance, Brown had a really impressive season.
Brown made 31 starts and threw 185.1 innings in 2025, allowing 2.43 earned runs per nine with a 28.3 percent strikeout rate, 7.8 percent walk rate, and a 48.1 percent ground-ball rate. Even if he finishes third behind Skubal and Crochet, those are front-line numbers over a full season. More importantly, they came without manipulating his options and workload. That is the exact behavior the PPI is designed to encourage in teams.
Awards, development focus
We have seen this mechanism matter. Julio Rodriguez, Corbin Carroll, and Gunnar Henderson delivered bonus picks to the Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks and Baltimore Orioles, respectively, by winning Rookie of the Year. Bobby Witt Jr. Netted the Kansas City Royals a pick with a top-three MVP finish. In the National League this year, a Drake Baldwin win would do the same for the Atlanta Braves. Houston now joins that list, and it did so by trusting a homegrown arm with a full runway.
What's next here
Awards night will likely end with Brown applauding a winner from Detroit or Boston. But the Astros do not leave empty-handed. They get another pick in a premium part of the 2026 draft, plus the confidence that a young starter just logged an ace-level season. For a club that plans to keep contending, that combination, an impact arm in the present and a bonus pick for the future, is exactly the point of the rule.