As I write this, there are 115 different pitchers this year who have thrown at least 100 innings. Among them, Kyle Freeland ranks tied for seventh in ERA-, at 62. The pitcher with whom he’s even: one Clayton Kershaw. The next pitcher down the list: one Justin Verlander. Now, we’re a site that loves its peripherals, and, indeed, if you sort by, say, FIP-, Freeland doesn’t look quite so good. But he still looks strong. According to a peripheral-based version of WAR, Freeland has been a plus. According to a runs-based version of WAR, Freeland is a viable candidate for the NL Cy Young.

I don’t hesitate to say that Freeland has been overlooked. He doesn’t get the attention of rotation-mate Jon Gray, because Gray throws that sexy power stuff, and he gets those sexy strikeouts. Freeland doesn’t do as much of the basic stuff that analysts look for, so he’s flown for this long under the radar. But if you’ll allow me some freedom here, I’d like to invoke a couple all-timer names. The images might be able to speak for themselves.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Note from Eric: Hey you, this is the last one of these for the year, as the minor-league regular season comes to a close. Thanks for reading. I’ll be taking some time off next week, charging the batteries for the offseason duties that lie ahead for Kiley and me.

D.J. Peters, CF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 7   FV: 45+
Line: 4-for-7, 2 HR, 2B (double header)

Notes
A comparison of DJ Peters‘ 2017 season in the Cal League and his 2018 season at Double-A gives us a good idea of what happens to on-paper production when a hitter is facing better pitching and defenses in a more stable offensive environment.

Reports of Peters’ physical abilities haven’t changed, nor is his batted-ball profile different in such a way that one would expect a downtick in production. The 2018 line is, I think, a more accurate distillation of Peters’ abilities. He belongs in a talent bucket with swing-and-miss outfielders like Franchy Cordero, Randal Grichuk, Michael A. Taylor, Bradley Zimmer, etc. These are slugging center fielders whose contact skills aren’t particularly great. Players like this are historically volatile from one season to the next but dominant if/when things click. They’re often ~1.5 WAR players who have some years in the three-win range. Sometimes they also turn into George Springer.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Performances from 8/26

Evan White, 1B, Seattle Mariners
Level: High-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 2   FV: 45
Line: 3-for-4, 2B, 3Bho

Notes
We now have a full season of data to help us figure out whether Evan White’s weird profile is going to play. A plus-running backwards guy (bats right, throws left, a generally unfavorable combination due to the defensive limitations and platoon issues caused by both) who plays plus defense at first base, White was slugging .391 at the start of August, which is rather uninspiring for a college hitter in the Cal League. In August, however, White has 30 hits in 90 plate appearances and is slugging .763. He has made subtle changes to his lower half, drawing his front knee back toward his rear hip more than he did at Kentucky, and taking a longer stride back toward the pitcher. White is more often finishing with a flexed front leg, which has helped him go down and lift balls in the bottom part of the strike zone by adjusting his lower half instead of his hands. It’s a more athletic swing that was implemented before White’s explosive August, though he may just be getting comfortable with it now. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Jeff Sullivan wondered aloud why the Rockies, a contending club that would benefit from some offensive help, hadn’t taken any steps to address a pretty clear weakness. Today, Colorado responded by calling up a 38-year-old outfielder who couldn’t get a major-league deal this season. If nostalgia is your thing, the Rockies’ decision to bring back Matt Holliday is a clear winner. Whatever questions Sullivan had yesterday, however, likely weren’t cleared up by this most recent move. That doesn’t mean it won’t work, of course.

From a feel-good perspective, the move is a no-brainer. Below is a WAR leaderboard for position players in Rockies franchise history.

Holliday is one of the franchise’s greatest players, arguably the team’s best hitter of all time after Larry Walker. In 2007, Holliday hit .340/.405/.607 with a 151 wRC+ and 6.9 WAR, that last figure still the best a Rockies player has recorded since Holliday was traded to the A’s ahead of the 2009 season. He finished second in the MVP voting that year, was called safe at home, and won the NLCS MVP as the franchise advanced to their only World Series appearance. Holliday would go on to capture a title with the Cardinals, but as the place where his career started, Denver clearly has some significance to the outfielder.

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The Nationals started to unload yesterday, making moves that, depending on your perspective, were either a few weeks too late, or a week and a half too early. It had been easy for a while to say the Nationals just needed time to come around, and our projections never really lost faith, but at some point a baseball team has to make up ground, and they were unable to get into a groove. There’s plenty to be written about what’s happened to the Nationals, but that might be better left for another day, or for another time when we can have a greater understanding.

The moves the Nationals made on Tuesday mean hardly anything for their future. It was more about just giving up on the present. And as far as the individual deals are concerned, you can see how Matt Adams should have a role on the Cardinals. Likewise, you can see how Daniel Murphy should have a role on the Cubs. And yet it was far easier to see how Daniel Murphy could’ve had a role on the Rockies. The Rockies being one of the teams with a higher waiver priority than the Cubs. Murphy wouldn’t have gotten to the Cubs in the first place had another team from the National League put in a claim, and while Murphy could’ve helped anyone, it sure seems like he could’ve made the biggest difference for Colorado. I don’t really know what they were thinking in allowing him to go by.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Johan Quezada, RHP, Minnesota Twins
Level: Low-A   Age: Turns 24 on Saturday   Org Rank: 46   FV: 35+
Line: 3.1 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 6 K

Notes
This was Johan Quezada’s first career appearance in full-season ball. An imposing mound presence at a towering 6-foot-6, he has recovered from the shoulder surgery that cost him all of 2017, and his velocity has returned. He sits 94-97 with extreme downhill plane created by his height, and he’ll show you an average slider every once in a while. Quezada’s breaking-ball quality and command need to develop as they’re understandably behind due to his limited pro workload. He’s a older-than-usual arm-strength/size lottery ticket. On the surface, he seems like a candidate for extra reps in the Arizona Fall League.

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Currently in possession of a 68-56 record and standing just a half-game out of first place in the NL West, the Colorado Rockies are in the midst of an objectively good season. Actually, the 2017 and -18 versions of the club have the best combined two-year winning percentage for any pair of Rockies teams in history, so one could make the argument that this is Colorado’s finest run ever. They’ve had two MVP candidates in the starting lineup both seasons and the starting pitching, long a team bugaboo, ranks ninth in the majors by WAR over that time period. Things in Colorado aren’t bad, per se.

But they could be better, it seems, without much effort. One real problem for the Rockies has been the team’s lack of offensive depth. It’s an issue they’ve shown little interest in addressing. And it’s costing them real wins.

With Nolan Arenado and Charlie Blackmon in 2017 and Arenado and Trevor Story in 2018, Colorado’s top-end offensive talent has been as dangerous as that of any team in baseball. Once you look past the top of the roster, though, things become a bit more frightening. Despite the team’s respectable raw numbers, the club’s offensive line reads like a gothic horror story after you factor in our old friend, Coors Field.

Even with the impressive performances by the brand names — most notably Nolan Arenado, who has been a legitimate MVP contender both seasons — the Rockies rank near the bottom of baseball in offense. At five of the eight main offensive positions — I’m not considering pitcher hitting or the DH for interleague road games — the Rockies have ranked 25th or worse in baseball by wRC+.

Now, DJ LeMahieu is a very ordinary offensive second baseman, outside of his .348/.416/.495 campaign in 2016, but he more than makes up for any bat-related shortfall with his defense. You can’t say that for the other positions ranking near the bottom of baseball.

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2017 | 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 Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels, and (most importantly) FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel* and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing within Longenhagen and McDaniel’s most recent update — and the updates published by Jeffrey Paternostro of Baseball Prospectus and John Sickels at Minor League Ball — have also been excluded from consideration.

*Note: I’ve excluded Baseball America’s list this year not due to any complaints with their coverage, but simply because said list is now behind a paywall.

For those interested in learning how Fringe Five players have fared at the major-league level, this somewhat recent post offers that kind of information. The short answer: better than a reasonable person would have have expected. In the final analysis, though, the basic idea here is to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Tyler Ivey, RHP, Houston (Profile)
Josh James, RHP, Houston (Profile)
Framber Valdez, LHP, Houston (Profile)
Ivey and James and Valdez all appear here together both because they (a) have been basically the minor leagues’ best pitchers over the past month and (b) are all members of the same organization — namely, the Houston Astros. This seems important for a couple reasons.

First, let’s just consider some data. Here are the top-10 minor-league pitchers (High-A or above) by strikeout rate since July 10th:

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They can’t all be Mike Trout, and this year, with the Millville Meteor posting a career-best 191 wRC+, the rest of the center-field pack has been as unproductive as any time in recent history. The collective 95 wRC+ recorded by all center fielders (including Trout) is the lowest it’s been since 2006, back when Trout was a high-school freshman.

Even with that fairly modest production, only a small handful of contenders — which for this series I’ve defined as teams with playoff odds of at least 15.0% (a definition that currently covers 15 teams) — are receiving less than 1.0 WAR from their center fielders, which makes them eligible for a spot among the Replacement-Level Killers.

By the way, since I don’t have anywhere else to put it — this is the last article in the series, since the RLK concept doesn’t work so neatly for pitchers and just one AL team has a DH who could be classified a Killer. Sorry if that was awkward; continue as you were…

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The Blue Jays’ made their first move of the deadline last night, sending late-inning reliever Seung Hwan Oh to Colorado for two minor leaguers, CF Forrest Wall and 1B Chad Spanberger. They made their second one this afternoon, exchanging LHP J.A. Happ for IF Brandon Drury and Triple-A left fielder Billy McKinney of the Yankees.

Wall was a comp-round pick out of high school and played second base because of a 40 arm on which he underwent shoulder surgery as an amateur. He’s since moved to center field and is still the advanced hitter he was as a prep, but the game power hasn’t showed up yet and he’s had some minor injuries along with some streakiness. Given the complications along the way, Wall probably ends up as a hit-first, multi-positional fourth outfielder, with some chance of less (an up/down guy) or more (low-end everyday center fielder for a few years). He’s maintained his 45 FV preseason grade.

Spanberger had a hot finish to his draft year last spring at Arkansas, showing off his 70-grade lefty raw power. He’s a late-count power guy who will always strike out some and occasionally gets overeager to launch one, chasing at times. He’s below average in terms of speed, defense, and positional value — and he also has some contact questions — so the power needs to show up in games and he needs to be patient enough to allow it to happen. He’s 22 in Low-A, so he’ll also need to move quicker to avoid becoming a Quad-A slugger or pinch-hitter, the latter of which is a luxury for which most teams don’t have a roster spot. He’s a soft 40 FV, but that will likely change given how he performs next year against more advanced pitching.

McKinney was a first-rounder in 2013 by Oakland and was traded for Addison Russell in an exchange with the Cubs, then again in 2016 to the Yankees in the Aroldis Chapman deal. He’s been a similar player the whole time, a medium-framed left-field-only defender with fringe to average speed, a 40 arm, and an average glove in left. What’s changed is that, in the past few seasons, he’s gone from a line-drive, hit-over-power type (which would probably make him a platoon/bench player) to a power-over-hit type with lift (which fits more in today’s game). With this shift, the outcome looks something like a soft 50 hit grade with 55 game power and a 50 glove, the lefty-hitting side of a solid platoon — and with no service time, to boot. He’s still a 40+ FV for us, as some stuff still needs to go well in the big leagues to turn into a 45+ or 50 FV type player, and there’s no margin for error given his profile.