The Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) was introduced in 2022 to incentivize teams to stop manipulating service time with their top organizational prospects and get the young stars of the sport to the Major League level faster. Should a PPI-eligible player win his league’s Rookie of the Year award or place in the top three in MVP or Cy Young voting before qualifying for arbitration, the team would then be awarded a late first-round PPI pick. Luckily, the Atlanta Braves benefit from this in the 2026 draft thanks to Drake Baldwin winning the National League Rookie of the Year last season.
Because Baldwin was a consensus Top 100 prospect and was on Atlanta's Opening Day roster, the Braves were awarded the 26th pick in the draft following Baldwin's ROY victory. This marks the sixth time (and first for the Braves) since the PPI pick's inception that a team has been awarded an additional first-round pick.
With that pick, the Braves selected Indiana State outfielder Carter Beck.
With the No. 26 pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, the @Braves select Carter Beck, OF, @IndStBaseball. pic.twitter.com/zbwegHuFV0
— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) July 11, 2026
Drake Baldwin's ROY victory comes full circle as the Braves select Carter Beck with their PPI pick
Drake Baldwin was a third-round pick in 2022, and by 2025 he was posting a .274/.341/.469 slash line in route to his Rookie of the Year award. However, he will also now be connected forever to Beck, who almost certainly will be another under slot signing, given that he barely made it into MLB Pipeline's top 200 2026 draft prospects.
Aside from having a terrific mustache, Beck does have some things going for him. He is a really strong contact hitter and that is definitely a demographic that is getting a lot of love in this year's draft. With some of the names that the Braves liked already gone, Atlanta doubled-down on taking college bats they like for cheap and making a strong push over slot in later rounds.
That said, this is a very risky strategy. There are a lot of teams with a bunch of draft bonus pool money. If the Braves are not careful, they could get stuck with a subpar pick here and with little to show for it.
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