Note: both White Sox infielder Marcus Semien and Padres right-hander Burch Smith would likely have appeared in this week’s edition of the Five, but for having been promoted earlier in the week as a result of September roster expansion.
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 definition of the word fringe. The author recognizes that the word has different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of this column, however — and for reasons discussed more thoroughly in a previous edition of the Five — the author has considered eligible for the Five any prospect who was absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists.
That said, it should also be noted that in cases where the collective enthusiasm regarding a player’s talent becomes very fevered — like how the enthusiasm collectively right now for Philadelphia third-base prospect Maikel Franco has become very fevered, for example — that will likely affect said player’s likelihood of appearing among the Five, given that the purpose of the series, at some level, is to identify prospects who are demonstrating promise above what one might expect given their current reputations within the prospect community.
With that said, here are this week’s Fringe Five:
Mookie Betts, 2B, Boston (Profile)
Having temporarily exhausted his store of praise for the Betts, the author has decided this week to utilize the rhetorical device known as “plagiarism” to the end of providing the requisite copy regarding the 20-year-old second baseman. The victim, in this case, is Red Sox beat reporter and very recent podcast guest Alex Speier.
Of Betts, Speier wrote the following on Monday for WEEI.com:
The number of players with at least a .400 OBP, 10 homers and 25 steals this year in the minors? That would be three. Aside from Betts, the other two? Byron Buxton, considered the top prospect in all of minor league baseball, who hit .334/.424/.520 with 12 homers and 55 steals as a 19-year-old in Single-A and High-A, and George Springer, the former UConn star who is hitting .303/.411/.600 with 37 homers and 45 steals between Double-A and Triple-A as a 23-year-old.
Betts isn’t Buxton or Springer. But there’s no one else in the minors who’s shown his diverse array of offensive weapons this year (with excellent defense at second base to boot), suggesting that he’s forced a drastic re-evaluation of a skill set that garnered no public attention entering this year.
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