The Fringe Five is a weekly exercise (introduced in April) wherein the author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own heart to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to this exercise, of course, is a working definition of fringe. Currently, for the purposes of this column, it’s any prospect who was absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists. (A slightly more robust meditation on the idea of fringe can be found here.)

Two players retain their place this week among the Five: young Philadelphia third-base prospect Maikel Franco and Cardinals Double-A outfielder Mike O’Neill.

Departing from the Five proper — mostly for reasons that concern the author’s Whim — are Cubs shortstop prospect Arismendy Alcantara, Mets right-hander (the recently promoted) Rafael Montero, and Washington left-hander Robbie Ray.

Replacing that triumvirate are well-educated Mets pitching prospect Matthew Bowman, Pirates right-hander (and also recently promoted) Nick Kingham, and Athletics first-base prospect Max Muncy — about all of whom one can learn more via technicolor prose in this week’s installment of the Fringe Five, below.

Matthew Bowman, RHP, New York NL (Profile)
Because, for the purposes of compiling the Five, the author typically limits his attention to the three highest levels of minor-league ball, the 22-year-old Bowman has only recently become “eligible” for this column, as it were. After recording a 26:4 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 30.2 innings in the Class-A Sally League, Bowman has now pitched 44.0 innings in the High-A Florida State League and posted strikeout and walk figures (47:9 K:BB) among the league’s best. Nor do Bowman’s excellent numbers represent all that is Rich and Compelling so far as his CV is concerned. Bowman is also an alumnus (or, at least, near-alumnus) of shockingly prestigious Princeton University. Furthermore, he’s found considerable success by utilizing mechanics which resemble those belonging to a certain undersized Giants right-hander.

To wit (from this longer feature):

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Matt Harvey didn’t throw a no-hitter against the Braves on Tuesday, but he did almost do that, not allowing a hit until the bottom of the seventh. It’s not that Harvey relied entirely on the strikeout — of the batters he faced, 13 didn’t whiff. But then, of the batters he faced, 13 did whiff, and Harvey’s season rate is verging on 30%. Matt Harvey was already good a year ago. Since then he’s only induced more grounders and cut his walk rate in half. Harvey, at this point, is in the argument for being the most valuable young pitcher in all of baseball.

Against the Braves, Harvey registered 15 swinging strikes on secondary stuff, which is outstanding. Yet he also picked up eight whiffs on his heater, which is kind of par for the Harvey course. No other starter’s fastball has led to so many swinging strikes, as Harvey can just be completely overwhelming. Instead of just using his fastball as a foundation, Harvey uses it also as a weapon, which is a rare gift. To have a swing-and-miss fastball is to have one hell of an advantage, and though fastballs tend to get slower over time, for now, at least, Harvey’s elite.

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Kyle Kendrick isn’t all that remarkable. The Philadelphia Phillies right-hander has a standard pitcher’s frame and fairly average stuff. Neither his velocity nor his repertoire particularly stands out. His numbers — in 178 career appearances; 137 of them starts — don‘t jump out at you.

But that doesn’t mean the 28-year-old isn’t an effective pitcher. Relying primarily on sinkers, changeups and control, Kendrick does what a back-of-the-rotation starter is expected to do: He keeps his team in games as often as not. Overshadowed in a rotation that features Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels — and, in recent years, Roy Halladay — he simply goes out and does his job.

Kendrick, who is 6-4, with a 3.76 ERA this year, takes the mound tonight against the Washington Nationals. He talked about the evolution of his repertoire when the Phillies visited Fenway Park in May. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about young pitchers, prospects switching positions, Jose Iglesias’ high BABIP, and base coaches.

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After months of threats and saber-rattling, the City of San Jose sued Major League Baseball and its 30 constituent teams on Tuesday over MLB’s refusal to allow the Oakland A’s to move to San Jose.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in San Jose, is a direct challenge to MLB’s federal antitrust exemption. San Jose claims that MLB places unreasonable restrictions on competition by giving each team its own exclusive territory (or in the case of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, shared territory) and veto power to prevent any other team from moving into that territory. As I explained in this FanGraphs post last September, under MLB rules, a team can move into the territory of another team only when the following conditions are met: a vote of three-fourths of the owners approving the move; the two ballparks are located at least five miles apart; the move results in no more than two teams in a single territory; and the team moving compensates the team already in the territory.

In addition to the federal antitrust claims, San Jose also charged MLB with violations of California antitrust law and with state law claims for interference with prospective economic advantage based on San Jose’s agreement to allow the A’s to buy certain parcels of city land, if the A’s plan to move is approved by the league.

You can read the lawsuit in its entirety here.

San Jose is represented by Joe Cotchett and his law firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy. Cotchett is a nationally well-known and well-regarded attorney with experience in antitrust cases. In fact, Cotchett represented the National Football League and the (former) Los Angeles Rams when the Oakland Raiders sued the league for antitrust violations in 1982 when the league voted against allowing the Raiders to move to Los Angeles. The Raiders won that lawsuit, and paved the way for other professional sports franchises to move from city to city more easily.

Except, that is, in baseball.

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Ah, another fortnight has passed. How did you spend them? Perhaps you were deeply immersed in the Teapot Dome scandal? Perhaps you were eagerly awaiting the release of “Yeezus?” Perhaps you were simply watching the paint dry in anticipation of the next iteration of this series? I know I was doing at least one of these things.

As always, you can peep the explanation of our depth charts and standings pages — which fuel The Fortnight like so much lemon lime Gatorade — here. This week, we’ll be looking at the fortnight’s biggest losers.

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Jeff Sullivan’s recent enjoyable trot through San Diego Padres statistics and history led to a number of commentors thinking about San Diego’s park factors. The Padres changed the outfield dimensions of Petco Park in the off-season, and since park factors are backwards looking and rely on multiple years of data, changing dimensions can throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the calculations. So, it’s possible that our park factors are now somewhat behind the times, and we need to keep this in mind when looking at the park adjusted numbers (such as wRC+, ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-, WAR, etc…) for San Diego players, both hitters and pitchers.

It’s not quite so simple as noting that the changing dimensions have made the old park factors useless, however. Moving in the fences helps home runs, yes. This is undeniable. But it also can decrease triples and doubles, as well as effect the more odd elements of park factors, such as walk-rates, strikeout rates and pop-up rates.

It’s too early in the season to construct terribly useful park factors for the new dimensions, but we can do some harmless back-of-the-napkin mathematics to at least determine if the recent numbers suggest at least the early signs of serious run environment changes.
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You all know the R.A. Dickey story by now. Journeyman major leaguer reinvents himself as a knuckleball thrower in his 30s, then refines the pitch to become one of the better starting pitchers in baseball, culminating with his selection as the National League Cy Young Award winner last year. The knuckleball is always a fascinating pitch, and Dickey is a fascinating guy, so there has been no shortage of media attention focused his direction.

While I was not working here at FanGraphs last year, I could not resist taking a belated look at some of Dickey’s dominating knuckleballs from that 2012 season. I’ve selected three particularly impressive pitches from that campaign and used an effect known as StroMotion to help track their movement.

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It’s the moment San Francisco Giants fans have dreaded since that fateful day in 2011: Right-handed pitching prospect Zack Wheeler has been promoted to the big leagues and will make his first start of his MLB career on Tuesday evening.

On July 28, 2011, the hurler became the property of the New York Mets when the Giants traded the sixth overall pick of the 2009 amateur draft during a deadline deal for veteran outfielder Carlos Beltran. San Francisco was desperately trying to win a second consecutive World Series title and felt the risk was worth the potential reward when the front office parted ways with its top pitching prospect. Unfortunately for Giants fans, the club failed to reach the World Series and Wheeler continues to show the potential for developing into a front-line starter.

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