Kris Bryant, the Chicago Cubs' (and perhaps baseball's) most prized prospect, was named the 2014 Minor League Player of the Year by Baseball America. The 22-year-old led the minor leagues in home runs with 43 and joins a list of notable names who have also received such recognition.
Bryant spent 2014 with both Double-A Tennessee and Triple-A Iowa and compiled a .325 batting average with 43 home runs, 100 RBIs and a .438 OBP in 138 games. He also led the minors in extra-base hits (78), slugging percentage (.661) and OPS (1.098). His Minor League Player of the Year honors is no surprise because it comes only a year after he won the College Player of the Year as the third baseman for the University of San Diego Toreros.
The Chicago Cubs drafted Bryant in 2013 with the second overall pick after the Houston Astros selected pitcher Mark Appel out of Stanford University. Despite his dominating performance throughout the minors this year, the Cubs said they will not promote Bryant to the majors in September, likely because of the MLB's service time stipulation. Fangraphs.com provides a good explanation of service time and why some teams delay promoting their top prospects:
"Prospects that are called up to the majors are under team control for six years of service time; almost always, three of these years they are paid at or near the major league minimum and three of them they are eligible for arbitration. However, teams can be creative, promoting prospects to the majors late enough that they don't accrue a full year of service time and therefore are under team control for one extra year."
Bryant expressed his frustration with the Cubs' decision to keep him in the minors and told ESPN Chicago, "I think now more than ever, I'm realizing this game is a business." But at age 22 Bryant has nothing to be fretting about. He'll likely be with the Cubs at some point next year, if not by spring training, and he should be a formidable option for them at third base in 2015 since current third baseman Luis Valbuena is arbitration eligible next year.
Bryant joins Byron Buxton, Wil Myers, Mike Trout, Jeremy Hellickson and Jason Heyward as the recent winners of the Baseball America award along with Jose Canseco (1985), Sandy Alomar Jr. (1989), Frank Thomas (1990), Manny Ramirez (1993), Derek Jeter (1994) and Andruw Jones (1995, 1996) among many others.
You can read more about Kris Bryant in this Baseball America article written by J.J. Cooper.
