The Fringe Five: Baseball’s Most Compelling Fringe Prospects

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a couple 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 both (a) absent from the most current iteration of Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list and (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on any of McDaniel’s updated prospect lists 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.

Matt Boyd, LHP, Toronto (Profile)
What one hopes to avoid when appearing on a heart-pounding episode of Antiques Roadshow — what one hopes to avoid is the discovery that the piece he’s submitted for appraisal is a mere replica. Here one finds perhaps the greatest distinction between the fast-paced world of antiques trading and professional baseball pitching. Consider, by way of example, the case of Toronto prospect Boyd. Over the course of 12 starts and 73.2 innings at Double-A New Hampshire, the left-handed Boyd produced strikeout and walk rates of 25.6% and 6.6%, respectively — marks which provided for him the fifth-best strikeout- and walk-rate differential among all Double-A pitchers. Following a promotion to Triple-A Buffalo this past week, Boyd produced an 8:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 27 batters — nearly replicating, in other words, the figures he’d produced at the previous level (box).

Below is a series of three pitches by Boyd from his most recent start to White Sox prospect Jason Coats — a changeup, fastball, and fastball for a strikeout.

Ryan Cordell, 3B/OF, Texas (Profile)
In 63 starts for the Rangers’ High-A affiliate, Cordell has now recorded 14-plus starts (i.e. at least roughly a quarter of them) at three different positions: third base, shortstop, and center field. It’s not surprising, in a general sense, that an organization would attempt to introduce a young player to multiple defensive positions. The specifics of Cordell’s case are notable, however. As has been mentioned previously in this space, Cordell played right field almost exclusively at Low-A ball in 2013 after having been drafted out of Liberty University. It’s uncommon for a player to transition from the corner outfield to, say, shortstop. Typically things move in the opposite direction. Also noteworthy regarding Cordell is the offensive profile relative to the increased defensive value. No one in the California League right now really possesses his combination of contact, power, and speed. Statistically, only Houston outfield prospect Brett Phillips is comparable — and Phillips appeared 107th on Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list this preseason.

Sherman Johnson, 2B/3B, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
For a number of reasons — including, for example, the start last night during which he recorded eight strikeouts against just 18 opposing batters (box) — right-handed Dodgers prospect Jose De Leon has officially been removed by the author from consideration for this weekly exercise. It’s very likely, given his early season performance, that De Leon will still finish the season near the top of the arbitrarily calculated Fringe Five Scoreboard found below. It’s also likely, however, that Sherman Johnson will pass him on that same scoreboard as early as next week. Johnson has been excellent since last Wednesday’s edition of this same thing, recording a 7:3 walk-to-strikeout ratio and also a home run over 33 plate appearances. Of the 199 qualifiers across all Double-A leagues, Johnson is among a group of just 10 batters to have produced a walk-to-strikeout ratio above 1.0. The only three hitters to have produced a higher isolated-power figure than Johnson either (a) are older than him or (b) play a less important defensive position or (c) both.

Max Kepler, 1B/OF, Minnesota (Profile)
During a recent edition of FanGraphs Audio, the present author and managing editor Dave Cameron discussed the rarity of a case, such as that involving Wil Myers and the Padres, of a player moving from center field to first base — the former of those positions requiring considerable range (among other qualities); the latter, not as much. Not unlike Myers, however, Twins prospect Max Kepler, who entered the season having recorded the majority of his minor-league starts in center, has appeared almost exclusively this season at first base. His case appears to be more similar to Darin Erstad’s, however, which former Angel made that transition to decrease exposure to injury. Kepler injured his arm last year and suffered a similar injury this spring. Whatever the problem, it hasn’t affected Kepler’s offense: in 196 plate appearances, he’s produced walk and strikeout rates of 9.7% and 11.2%, respectively, plus a .193 isolated-power figure — all as just a 22-year-old in his first exposure to Double-A. Moreover, he’s recorded one of the top-20 speed scores among Double-A qualifiers, further suggesting that he’s retained the requisite athleticism to play an outfield position competently.

Joe Musgrove, RHP, Houston (Profile)
This marks the right-handed Musgrove’s third consecutive appearance among the Five proper. His lone start since last week’s edition of this column was not his most impressive: while he conceded just a single run over 7.0 innings, he also recorded just three strikeouts against 27 batters (box) — which is to say, decidedly inferior to the strikeout rate he’d established previous to that start. Notable about that June 12th appearance, however, is that Musgrove recorded it for Double-A Corpus Christi, representing the right-hander’s debut at that level.

Here, courtesy of YouTube user farmsystem, is a nine-minute video of Musgrove’s bullpen session before that Double-A debut — a film notable probably less for what it reveals about Musgrove himself and more for its resemblance to Andy Warhol’s eight-hour silent film Empire, which film was created by Warhol expressly not to be watched.

The Next Five
These are players on whom the author might potentially become fixated.

Aaron Brooks, RHP, Kansas City (Triple-A Pacific Coast League)
Willson Contreras, C, Chicago NL (Double-A Southern League)
Jharel Cotton, RHP, Los Angeles NL (High-A California League)
Adam Frazier, 2B/SS/OF, Pittsburgh (Double-A Eastern League)
Dario Pizzano, OF, Seattle (Double-A Eastern League)

Fringe Five Scoreboard
Here are the top-10 the players to have appeared among either the Fringe Five (FF) or Next Five (NF) so far this season. For mostly arbitrary reasons, players are assessed three points for each week they’ve appeared among the Fringe Five; a single point, for each week among the Next Five.

*Currently ineligible for inclusion among the Five due either to (a) promotion to major leagues, (b) appearance on Kiley McDaniel’s prospect list, or (c) author’s declaration.