The 2025 MLB Awards week is in the books, one that saw repeat MVP winners, as well as a first-time Cy Young Award winner. Paul Skenes added more hardware to his shelf, as the Pirates’ ace won the Cy Young Award one year after becoming the 2024 NL Rookie of the Year. In the process, he, along with several other young players, are set to take advantage of the pre-arbitration bonus pool.

Kurtz & Skenes set for bonuses

When the MLB and MLBPA hammered out a new CBA in 2022, several incentives to pre-arbitration players & their teams were introduced. Among them was the pre-arbitration pool, funded by the MLB Commissioner’s Office.

It’s a $50MM pool set up every year to pay out pre-arbitration players for excellence on the field. The pool also came with bonuses for those who win the Rookie of the Year, as well as MVP, Cy Young, and All-MLB bonuses.

Since Paul Skenes won the Cy Young in 2025, Skenes is due a $2.5MM bonus through the Commissioner’s pre-arbitration pool. Kurtz, meanwhile, will get a $750,000 bonus for winning the Rookie of the Year, as will Braves catcher Drake Baldwin.

Jacob Wilson (AL) and Cade Horton (NL), the runners-up for the Rookie of the Year in their respective leagues, will get $500,000. Lastly, Hunter Brown, who was on a pre-arbitration deal heading into 2025, finished third in the AL Cy Young vote. He too is set for a bonus via the pool, as is Bryan Woo. Woo finished fifth in the AL Cy Young race.

There are some quirks to the pre-arbitraiton pool. One of those being that a player is only eligible to receive one bonus, the highest-possible one. For Kurtz, he also made it to the All-MLB 2nd Team, which would have yielded a $500,000 bonus had he been eligible for multiple ones.

Skenes, who was on the All-MLB 1st Team, would also be ineligible for the $1MM bonus for making the 1st Team.

It’s also worth noting that several pre-arbitration players, like Junior Caminero and Pete Crow-Armstrong, did make the 2nd Team.

PPI bonus for the Braves

Another component to awards season is the Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI). Prospects who make a team’s Opening Day roster and are considered a top-100 prospect by at least two of three rankings by MLB.com, ESPN, or Baseball America, are eligible.

Pre-arbitration players who meet the above requirements & win the Rookie of the Year, or finish in the top-three of the MVP and/or Cy Young vote, can net their team an additional MLB Draft pick. The Braves lucked out this year.

Drake Baldwin met the requirements, including the one to be on Atlanta’s Opening Day roster this season. Thus, the Braves are slated to get an additional draft pick, after the first round, come July 2026.

Unfortunately for the Pirates and Athletics, neither team will be eligible for a PPI pick.

The Pirates didn’t receive one in 2025, either, after Skenes won the Rookie of the Year in 2024. Even though Skenes checked the box for the prospect rankings, he was not on the Pirates’ Opening Day roster last season.

Neither was Kurtz, who didn’t make his MLB debut until late April.

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