Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

The Fringe Five is a weekly column in which the author attempts to identify the most compelling rookie-eligible players not to have appeared on a top-100 prospect list. What follows is an inspection of two players who appeared frequently among the Five last year, but became ineligible this year owing to their growing prospect status.

Mookie Betts, 2B, Boston (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 21   Top-15: 4th   Top-100: 59th
Line: 102 PA, 9.8% BB, 7.8% K, .422/.471/.689 (.425 BABIP), 10/12 SB

Summary
Betts is capable of most everything on a baseball field — including to play multiple positions on it, probably.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced last April by the present author, wherein that same ridiculous 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 the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists* and also (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on the midseason prospect lists produced by those same notable sources or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Toronto at Kansas City | 20:10 ET
Drew Hutchison (26.0 IP, 80 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) faces Yordano Ventura (25.0 IP, 84 xFIP-, 0.8 WAR). The latter, in addition to having posted the highest average fastball velocity among qualified starters (which isn’t particularly surprising), has also generated a considerable number of swings and misses with his secondary pitches (which is more surprising). Hutchison, for his part, has actually recorded even better defense-independent figures, having now struck out more than a third of opposing batters in consecutive starts.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto, Maybe?

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Last week in these pages, the author considered the most improved pitchers by projected WAR. What follows is a very similar thing, except for hitters. As noted in that first post, there are multiple ways to perform such an exercise. As in the case of that first post, I’ve chosen here to (first) calculate the average of Steamer and ZiPS’ preseason WAR projections for each player and then (second) find the difference between that figure and the average updated WAR projection. As with last week, I’ve scaled all ZiPS projections to FanGraphs’ depth-chart plate-appearance projections.

What follows are the five hitters whose end-of-season WAR projections have most improved since the beginning of the season. Projection denotes a composite Steamer and ZiPS projection. PRE denotes the player’s preseason projection; UPD, the updated projection. All figures are current as of some time in the middle of the night between Tuesday and Wednesday.

5. Mike Trout, OF, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
Projection (PRE): 663 PA, .303/.402/.529, 160 wRC+, 50 Off, 5 Def, 8.6 WAR
Projection (UPD): 685 PA, .307/.399/.542, 164 wRC+, 54 Off, 14 Def, 10.1 WAR

Notes
There are certain elements of Mike Trout’s first 100-plus plate appearances that aren’t ideal. His walk rate, for example, is nearly just half of what it was in 2013; his strikeout rate, about 50% higher. The likely explanation for both trends: Trout has made less contact thus far than in previous seasons. If certain mild concerns exist with regard to the process, less can be said about the product. Both case and point: Trout, who has led the major leagues in WAR over each of the past two seasons, is doing that same exact thing again through the first month of this one. Incredibly, after having received the highest projected WAR figures from both Steamer and ZiPS before the season, Trout has somehow managed to exceed expectations.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Atlanta at Miami | 19:10 ET
Alex Wood (35.0 IP, 67 xFIP-, 0.7 WAR) faces Jose Fernandez (31.2 IP, 44 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR) in a rematch of last Tuesday’s entirely splendid contest featuring these same exact pitchers (box). After playing in front of what is arguably the majors’ second-best center-field camera last Tuesday, the clubs — which meet in Miami this time — once again play in front of arguably the majors’ second-best center-field camera.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta Radio.

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Episode 444
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he maybe does or doesn’t advocate on behalf of not ever swinging.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 37 min play time.)

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As of 1997, when the the author visited the latter, just the Great Wall of China and Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island shared the distinction of being the only man-made structures visible from space. Visible from space neither then nor now — and also made by what the author’s wife regards as “half a man at best” — are the NERD scores one finds below.

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on rookie-eligible players. Read previous editions of the Prospect Watch here. Note also: all cited ages are relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year).

J.D. Sussman, the member of FanGraphs’ crack squad of prospect analysts typically responsible for Thursday’s edition of this daily Watch, has suggested that his “real job” will prevent him from fulfilling his obligations to the site today. The present author, who is barely employed by anyone, has volunteered to replace Sussman, provided that he (i.e. that same and present author) might also avoid exerting himself unduly.

To that end, what one finds in this edition of the Watch is a brief survey of the top-10 qualified minor-league hitters by FIB*, or Fielding Independent Batting (Asterisk). What FIB* isn’t is the same metric introduced to readers by Bradley Woodrum about three years ago. That one, called Fielding Independent Batting, but without the very integral asterisk, accounts for xBABIP and is presented as an index stat, like wRC+. What FIB* is is a batting metric with which the author experimented last fall and which is calculated almost precisely like FIP, except then placed on the same scale as wOBA*. Alternately stated: FIB* is a wOBA estimator which accounts only for home runs, walks, and strikeouts.

*The equation, in full: [(HR*12 + BB*3 – K*2) * .141] + .3267.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced last April by the present author, wherein that same ridiculous 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 the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists* and also (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on the midseason prospect lists produced by those same notable sources or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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Since nearly the first day of the season, each player page at FanGraphs has featured — in addition to the assortment of 2014 projections made available during the preseason — both a rest-of-season and updated end-of-season projection for both the Steamer and ZiPS systems. In what follows, the author has utilized that data to the end of identifying five pitchers whose end-of-season projections have most improved since the beginning of the season.

Depending on what question one is specifically hoping to answer, there are a number of ways to attempt such an endeavor. What follows is the methodology I’ve used, however, with a brief explanation of certain choices.

What I’ve done is to:

1. Find the preseason projections for each pitcher according both to Steamer and ZiPS.

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