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 any updated list — such as the revised and midseason lists released by Baseball America or BP’s recent midseason top-50 list or Longenhagen’s summer update — 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.
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Andres Machado, RHP, Kansas City (Profile)
After signing with Kansas City in December of 2010, the right-handed Machado had failed to establish himself as anything like a prospect as of last year, ending the 2016 season as a 23-year-old who’d never ascended above Rookie ball. Following a decent run with High-A Wilmington to begin the present campaign, however, Machado has now recorded a 25.5% strikeout rate in seven appearances (all starts) for Omaha.
A brief examination of the film reveals little in the way of secondary stuff. What else it reveals, though, is an impressive fastball with plus velocity.
The video below documents a series of six swinging strikes — all by way of the fastball — recorded by Machado in just the first inning of his August 22nd start at Rangers affiliate Round Rock (box).
It’s a profile that may be incomplete even for a major-league relief role at the moment. Given Machado’s lack of proximity to the major leagues at this same point last year, however, it’s impressive.
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