Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition 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 among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on a midseason list will also be excluded from eligibility.

*All 200 names!

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Cameron Perkins, OF, Philadelphia (Profile)
Perkins appeared once among the Five last year and has been among the last players cut on multiple occasions since then. He has, at points, exhibited contact skills, power, and defensive promise — but rarely all three of them in concert. After roughly a month of games, though, he’s acquitted himself superlatively in each capacity. Consider: as a batter, he’s produced one of the top combinations of contact and power among qualifiers in the Triple-A International League.

The only two hitters who’ve bested Perkins by this measure are a first baseman (Hoskins) and major-league veteran (Tejada). One notes, also, that Perkins is the only player to record strikeout and ISO marks that are both a standard deviation better than average. The defensive returns are also positive. After occupying the corners almost exclusively as a younger professional, Perkins made roughly half his starts in center for Lehigh Valley last year. That trend has continued into 2017, and the methodologies used both by Baseball Prospectus and Clay Davenport suggest his center-field play is in the average range.

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Episode 737
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the program, during which he leads the guest on a tour of the National League’s easternmost division. There, one finds that the Mets are infested with injuries, that the Nationals are contending with the loss of their center fielder, and that three other clubs are also present.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 46 min play time.)

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Episode 736
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod. In this episode, he examines a shortstop in the Rangers system who’s playing catcher; a first baseman in the SEC who’s leading the conference in homers and stolen bases; and the strange cult of the college third baseman.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 13 min play time.)

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition 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 among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on a midseason list will also be excluded from eligibility.

*All 200 names!

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Sherman Johnson, 2B/3B, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in “Self-Reliance” that it’s essential to “abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.” Immediately, one senses that Emerson’s words might lack universal application. When the whole cry of voices declares that the building is on fire, for example, it’s wise to hear them out — regardless of the impressions one has previously formed. In the case of fringe prospects, however, the risks associated with such inflexibility are less pronounced.

Which is fortunate, because a brief inspection of things reveals that the present author has abided by his impression that Sherman Johnson is a promising ballplayer. In 2015, Johnson appeared (alongside current major leaguers Matt Boyd and Jharel Cotton) at the top of the arbitrarily calculated Fringe Five Scoreboard. Last year, Johnson appeared (by himself) at the top of that same, haphazardly constructed Scoreboard. Three weeks into the current season, Johnson is poised once again to merit similar consideration.

Why? For a few reasons. Johnson’s a capable defender. He’s continued to record roughly equivalent walk and strikeout rates. He’s produced roughly average power numbers at every professional level. It’s a promising, if clearly not elite, collection of skills. Relative to his pedigree, however, it’s pretty impressive.

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Episode 735
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the program, during which he discusses the absence of Starling Marte from the Pirates and the absence of Madison Bumgarner from the Giants and, implicitly, the absence of “human behavior” from his behavior.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min play time.)

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Episode 734
The prolific Travis Sawchik is a former beat reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and author of the book Big Data Baseball. He’s also the guest on this edition of the program, during which he identifies which Marriotts in this country are located nearest to and furthest from major-league ballparks; recalls where he’s gone drinking in Covington, Kentucky; and relays a brief, dark fact about how his ancestors have fared in the mines of Western Pennsylvania.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 19 min play time.)

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Episode 733
Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and the author of an eponymous Baseball Newsletter. He’s also (a) FanGraphs’ writer-in-residence for the month of April and (b) the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 56 min play time.)

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Note: this week’s edition of Best Of has been published on Sunday instead of Saturday because (a) Paul Swydan is away and (b) he asked an irresponsible colleague to take his place.

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.

MONDAY
Eric Thames Is Still Mashing by Nick Stellini
What was true when Stellini published this on Monday remains true today.

Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix Changes by Mike Podhorzer
Danny Salazar’s throwing more changeups, Kendall Graveman more fastballs. Podhorzer’s on the case.

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition 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 among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on a midseason list will also be excluded from eligibility.

*All 200 names!

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Matt Cooper, RHP, Chicago AL (Profile)
For the duration of his professional career, Cooper has mostly looked like the sort of polished collegiate pitcher who’s capable of thriving against less refined competition in the lower minors but who lacks the arm speed to succeed against more advanced hitters. In 213.0 innings as a professional, the right-hander has produced strikeout and walk rates of 33.3% and 6.8%, respectively. Statistically, that renders him the minor-league equivalent of Max Scherzer or Noah Syndergaard — except for that Cooper (a) recorded many of those innings in a relief capacity and (b) has typically thrown a fastball that travels about 10 mph slower than either Scherzer or Syndergaard’s.

As I say, he’s typically thrown such a fastball. At midseason of last year, however, reports suggested that he’d added a bit of velocity, sitting more comfortably in the low 90s. And, promisingly, he’s proved capable of surviving thus far against Double-A competition. After a successful run as a reliever in the Southern League last year, the former 16th-round pick has recorded strikeout and walk rates of 47.1% and 5.9%, respectively, over the course of two starts so far in 2017.

Here’s video from last season of what appears to be Cooper’s changeup thrown from a very high arm slot:

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