CLEVELAND — We know the Astros are one of the most forward-thinking, analytically minded organizations in baseball. They’ve led baseball in infield shift usage in recent seasons. They’ve experimented with piggy-back rotations in the minor leagues, they’ve been creative in maximizing draft pools, and have given us a revolutionary bullpen figure, the gift that is Chris Devenski.

They’ve also been as aggressive as any team I’ve observed with regard to outfield alignment.

Outfield alignment doesn’t receive as much attention as infield shifts. There are few, if any, outfield alignment measures publicly available, and we don’t often see outfield alignments in full scope on television broadcasts prior to a batted ball. Average depth is recorded by Statcast, but we’re still working on understanding optimum outfield positioning.

But the Astros are up to something — something which I first noticed last season at PNC Park.

Since air balls are more evenly distributed than ground balls, there are typically fewer radical defensive alignments in the outfield. Since there are only three fielders tasked with covering a much larger area of ground than in the infield, outfielders are generally kept in equidistant positions, spreading risk. But the above alignment against the left-handed-hitting Gregory Polanco represented an extreme swing to the left. It appeared counterintuitive, too, with the Astros playing Polanco as if he were an extreme right-handed pull hitter. In this case, the left fielder was near the left-field line, the center fielder shading toward left center, and the right fielder nearly in right center.

But the approach appears to be rooted in logic, too. While most ground balls are pulled, air balls are more evenly distributed, with batters often slightly favoring the opposite field.

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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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One of the classic criticisms of the front-page entries on FanGraphs is that it can sometimes look like writers are just scanning different leaderboards until they find a subject. Now, there’s nothing actually wrong with that, I don’t think. That’s why the leaderboards exist — so we can all learn from what they say. It’s not like we can easily and automatically keep track of everything by ourselves. Still, I understand where the criticism comes from. And so I’d like to be up front here: This post is about something I didn’t expect to see on a leaderboard. There’s no deeper inspiration. But when I saw a player’s line, I knew I couldn’t not write about it.

In the early going this season, the White Sox have been a pleasant surprise! They’re hanging tight with the Indians, and they’re well ahead of, say, the Royals. One element that’s driven the White Sox has been the pitching staff, and, specifically, the bullpen. Even coming into the year, the team had Nate Jones and David Robertson, so the bullpen wasn’t likely to be terrible. To this point, it’s second out of all big-league bullpens in ERA-. It’s first in K-BB%. That…isn’t what anyone expected. And now, a plot.

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On Monday, I asked for your help in evaluating these five hitters who have gotten off to wonderful starts:

• Bryce Harper
• Eric Thames
• Mitch Haniger
• Aaron Judge
• Eugenio Suarez

On Tuesday, I asked for your help in evaluating these five hitters who have gotten off to terrible starts:

• Jose Bautista
• Alex Gordon
• Gregory Bird
• Dansby Swanson
• Byron Buxton

The 10 polls accumulated thousands upon thousands of total votes. I was looking for you to select projected rest-of-season wRC+ marks, and you graciously participated in tremendous numbers. I don’t always follow up on my poll posts; sometimes I just want the polls to start a conversation, and sometimes I don’t think the data is worth a follow-up entry. But here I’d like to show you how the FanGraphs community voted. As a sneak preview, I’ll tell you now that apparently the community thinks Suarez is officially a better hitter today than Bautista is. Weird game!

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Thomas Pannone was almost an outfielder in the Cubs system. Instead, he’s baffling batters and racking up zeroes for the Lynchburg Hillcats. The 22-year-old left-hander has made four starts for Cleveland’s High-A affiliate and has yet to be charged with an earned run. Stingy to a fault, he’s fanned 31 batters and allowed just seven hits in 20.2 innings.

His scoreless streak — save for one unearned marker on April 12 — is even more impressive when you go back to last year. Counting his final three appearances in 2016, Pannone has now gone 38 consecutive innings without blemishing his ERA.

The Indians drafted Pannone out of the College of Southern Nevada in the ninth round of the 2013 draft. A year earlier, he’d bypassed an opportunity to sign with a team which liked him more for his bat than for his arm.

“I was going to be an outfielder,” explained Pannone, who was selected by Chicago’s NL club in the 33rd round out of a Rhode Island high school. “But between how late in the draft it was, and not being sure I was fully ready to start a pro career, I went to a junior college instead. One thing led to another, and I was drafted as a pitcher the following summer.”

That wasn’t what Pannone had in mind when he went west.

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On Tuesday, I ran a poll, asking what you would pay Eric Thames now, given what he’s done to MLB pitching — and the Reds — over the first three weeks of the season. When asked what kind of annual salary you’d agree to under the same three year term that he signed this winter, a majority of the responders (56%) selected $11-$15 million per year. The weighted average of all the votes came out to just under $15 million, so the crowd estimated that a fair three-year contract for Thames now would be something like $45 million.

And while I think there are valid concerns about the lack of information we have concerning how Thames will adjust as the league adjusts to him, I still think that number is overly conservative. If I were tasked with crafting an offer for Thames at this point, and followed the same constraint that he was only accepting three year offers to put it on the same scale as the one he signed this winter, I’d offer him the Edwin Encarnacion deal: $60 million over three years.

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12:03

botchatheny: trouble in st. louis ? –

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PITTSBURGH — Nearly 20 years ago, in the back yard of his half-acre lot in suburban Las Vegas, Mike Bryant completed what has became a crucial construction project for his family and the Chicago Cubs. Foundational holes were dug, and concrete was poured, to support three metal frames from which nylon netting was draped. The result: a spartan batting cage within feet of his home.

Kris Bryant often waited until the evenings, when his father had completed his private hitting instruction, to enter the cage.

“We had some lights that weren’t very good, but they did the job,” said Bryant of evening hitting sessions. “[The cage] was just a net and some dirt on the ground. The net had holes everywhere. You’d be hitting baseballs across the street and into other houses… But I was fortunate to have it at my finger tips and swing whenever I wanted. Other guys had to go to a local batting cage and find time to hit.”

Bryant hit balls across the street and against neighbors’ homes because he hit the ball in the air. In the cage, Mike Bryant taught his son to elevate the ball. He would create targets in the upper part of the netting and challenge Bryant to direct the ball there. The targets were always raised above the ground.

“It would be like, ‘Try to hit in the back right-hand corner of the cage. Try to hit it right there.’ It’s almost something I practiced when I was younger and didn’t know,” said Bryant of his uppercut plane. “Being young, you are not as focused on your swing, you are just out there hitting. But my dad would do certain games in the cage where I would hit targets in the air and I would practice it.”

While it’s probably unnecessary to remind our loyal readers that we’ve written often about the fly-ball revolution at FanGraphs this offseason and spring, you can read some of our musings here, here, and here.

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