FanGraphs Baseball

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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 in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) received a future value grade of 45 or less from Dan Farnsworth during the course of his organizational lists and who (b) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo, and John Sickels, and also who (c) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on an updated prospect list or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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.

Chance Adams, RHP, New York AL (Profile)
Adams debuted among the Five proper last week on the strength (generally) of his season-to-date performance and (specifically) his two most recent starts. The first of those appearances was impressive for the outcome itself: against Pirates affiliate Bradenton, the 21-year-old Adams recorded a 10:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio against just 17 batters over 5.0 no-hit innings. The line from the second start was less conspicuously great (5.1 IP, 19 TBF, 3 K, 1 BB) but notable for another reason: it was the product of Adams’ first Double-A appearance. The right-hander recorded his second-ever Double-A start just last night (Thursday) at Orioles affiliate Bowie (box). Adams conceded six runs. Which, that’s not ideal. But he also produced a 8:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 25 batters. Which, more ideal. And where matters of projecting future success are concerned, it’s the latter of those marks on which one likely ought to dwell.

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We’ve long known Trevor Bauer as the 21-year-old kid with attitude who shook off Miguel Montero as a rookie. The No. 3 overall pick from 2011 who Terry Francona called stubborn and implored to work more with the coaching staff.

Brian Dozier recently described Bauer to Eno Sarris as someone who “lives up in the zone” and who won’t go away from his strengths to attack Dozier, a high-ball hitter. And while it’s technically still true that Bauer often throws his fastballs high in the zone, it’s an interesting reminder of the perception of what Bauer was in the past, and the reality of what Bauer is now. The perception of Bauer was that he was so transfixed with his own pitching style, he was resistant to change. The reality is now, he couldn’t look more different.

Bauer opened the year in the bullpen after a rough 2015, but found himself back in the rotation after Cody Anderson’s early season struggles. In 11 starts, he’s got a 2.96 ERA and a 3.22 FIP. Over the last 30 days, he leads the entire majors in WAR among pitchers. But results are results, and without a change in process, there’d be no reason to believe the results should be any different. This is what a complete change in process looks like:
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Baseball never lacks for intriguing story lines. There is always a player breaking out and there is always a player declining. There are Cinderella teams and disappointing collapses. In this sport, you can always find something new and exciting to watch. But this post isn’t about those expectation defying feats. On the contrary, this post is about the predictable and reliable greatness of a guy named Miguel Cabrera and the absurdity dwelling beneath it.

Prior to the start of the season, our Depth Chart projections spit out a 2016 projected slash line of .310/.393/.524 for Cabrera, which amounted to a .387 wOBA. After a disappointing 0-for-5 game yesterday, Cabrera currently sits at .301/.379/.538 with a .383 wOBA. It’s not a perfect match for his projected line, but it’s damn close. His overall production is down from when he was a Triple Crown and MVP winner, but that’s to be expected for a 33-year-old. He’s still a stellar hitter putting up impressive numbers that are well in-line with what we expect to see from the future Hall of Famer. But underneath his cumulative numbers are a couple of jarring splits.

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I was reading through Jon Heyman’s latest Inside Baseball, and then I got to the White Sox section. Within, Heyman said something about Chris Sale, and though it wasn’t specifically about everything that’s going to follow in here, it at least works well enough for me to embed:

Chris Sale’s pitches come from such an unusual angle, it seems to fool umpires. It looked like he had an 0-and-5 count on Nick Castellanos in one at-bat (the actual count was 3-and-2)

Nothing important, really. Just a fleeting thought about one at-bat in particular. OK! Well, as you know, balls and strikes have to do with multiple factors. The pitcher plays a part. The hitter plays a part. The umpire plays a part. Dumb luck plays a part. And the catcher plays a part. In some previous posts, I’ve quickly touched on the White Sox’s catchers. It seems time for something in greater depth, because this has been an awfully big problem for a team that’s badly slipped.

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Ben and Sam discuss their fatalistic feelings concerning Noah Syndergaard, banter about fun facts and Fernando Abad, and talk about impending trade-deadline decisions for the White Sox, Yankees, and Pirates.

It’s easy to consider over- and underachieving players in isolation. It’s only a little bit harder to put them in context. Below is some context. I exported a spreadsheet of every qualified position player on the season. Then I exported a spreadsheet of all our preseason projections, and I compared the two, looking at actual vs. projected WAR over however many trips to the plate each given player has had. Which players have underachieved expectations the most? Here are 10 names:

Prince Fielder is off his expected pace by about two and a half wins, which is absurd and terrible. Not that the Rangers have even really needed his help. But Fielder isn’t the only struggling star player, and right there in second is Andrew McCutchen, whom the Pirates could dearly use. He’s about tied with Giancarlo Stanton, who’s got his own problems, but let’s focus on one player at a time. McCutchen, by now, was supposed to be almost a three-win player. He hasn’t been close to a one-win player, and as he’s sunk, so has the team around him.

The Pirates have a whole lot of issues, sure. And the outfield as a whole has still been productive. Lower-budget teams, however, need their star players to be star players, and McCutchen hasn’t been a star player. It’s because he doesn’t have his swing.

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Todd Frazier hasn’t been exactly what the White Sox hoped when they traded a slew of prospects for him in the offseason. I mean, yeah, he’s got a share of the MLB home run lead with 21, but everything else has been out of whack. Despite those 21 home runs, Frazier’s actually barely been a league-average hitter, a .201 batting average being the key contributor to a pedestrian 104 wRC+. The stellar base-running Frazier displayed in 2014 has been absent. Any defensive metric suggests Frazier’s once-solid defense has gone into a spiral this year. Frazier’s essentially been an all-or-nothing home run machine, which has amounted to just 0.7 WAR for the year.

You look at the home runs, and you see the potential, but then you look at the mediocre overall batting line, and your eye is drawn to the batting average, because it’s the only thing that’s out of whack. Just .201. Frazier’s not striking out much more than usual, so you look to the BABIP, and you see… .182. Todd Frazier has a .182 batting average on balls in play this year, the lowest in baseball by more than 30 points. Excellent! Regression is near! That’s how BABIP works, right?

Well, yeah, kind of. Frazier will finish the year with a BABIP higher than .182, because surely he’s had some misfortune, but you don’t misfortune yourself all the way to a sub-.200 BABIP almost halfway through the year. More than anything, this is on Frazier.

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Ben and Sam talk to Professor Alan Nathan about the physics of knuckleballs, then talk to WFAA’s Brett Shipp about his reporting on public funding for the Rangers’ new ballpark.

When the Nationals decided to begin the year with Danny Espinosa as their starting shortstop, with top prospect Trea Turner beginning the year back in Triple-A, it was widely seen as another example of a team manipulating the service time rules in order to extend their controllable years over a valuable player. That narrative was seemingly reinforced when the Nationals stuck with Espinosa even after he hit .185/.316/.246 in April, especially given that Turner was hitting .317/.387/.463 in Triple-A at the end of the first month of the season. And as the two disparate batting lines were compared and contrasted, calls for Turner to replace Espinosa got louder and louder.

Trea Turner's at .357/.430/.529 in AAA. Danny Espinosa is hitting .182/.324/.200 and his OBP is inflated by batting in front of the pitcher.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) April 28, 2016

Yet the Nationals stuck with Espinosa. They pointed to his superior defense as a primary reason, also noting that Turner has some work to do with the glove, and stuck with that plan even after Turner came up and went 3 for 3 with a double and a walk after he got summoned to the big leagues while Ryan Zimmerman went on paternity leave. And now, as we reach the end of June, it’s probably time to admit the Nationals made the right call.

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