The Fringe Five: Baseball’s Most Compelling Fringe Prospects

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, 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.

Joan Gregorio, RHP, San Francisco (Profile)
Gregorio debuted among the Five a couple weeks ago on the strength of an excellent early-season fielding-independent record, a fastball that’s been sitting at around 94 mph, a slider that’s capable of serving as an out pitch, and impressive physical stature. He appears here now on the strength of all those qualities, plus also one more: a promotion to Triple-A Sacramento. Gregorio recorded his Pacific Coast League debut on May 12, producing a 4:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 20 batters over 5.0 innings (box). A pretty excellent outcome, that. There remain legitimate reasons to wonder about Gregorio’s future role. His delivery is awkward, for example. Also, he appears to have little comfort with his changeup — which raises the question of how he might contend with left-handed batters.

Perhaps as a partial answer to that question, here’s footage of Gregorio recording two swings and misses against left-handed batters by way of his breaking ball:

Sherman Johnson, 2B/3B, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
Rumors to the effect that the present author recently requested a song for Sherman Johnson on nationally syndicated call-in program Delilah — those are chicanerous and deplorable. Statements to the effect that Johnson’s second week at Triple-A Salt Lake represented an improvement over his first week there — those are accurate. In terms of results, at least, they are.

Regard:

Sherman Johnson at Triple-A

Week	PA	BB	K	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	BABIP
5/4 to 5/10	25	2	6	1	.087	.160	.217	.063
5/11 to 5/17	20	1	4	0	.278	.316	.444	.357

With the exception of batted balls more readily becoming hits, there’s actually not a lot of difference between Johnson’s second week in the Pacific Coast League and his first. One finds fewer walks and more strikeouts than was typical of Johnson’s time in the Texas League. Accounting for all the vagaries associated with a move to a more difficult level, however, this isn’t unexpected.

Peter Mooney, SS, Miami (Profile)
The first couple sentences in this brief entry on Peter Mooney necessarily concern his size. Because regard: it’s a small size. The reader is likely familiar with Jose Altuve, famous for his exploits on the field but also famous for his small size. Altuve one notes, is listed at a 5-foot-6 and 165 pounds. Mooney, for his part, is listed either as slightly bigger or slightly smaller than that: 5-foot-8 and 168 at this site, but 5-foot-6 and 155 pounds both at Baseball Reference and Minor League Baseball’s official site. The precise figures aren’t important. The point is made: Mooney isn’t what scouts would call “physical.” His appearance among the Five, however, has little to do with his dimensions, but rather his performance. During the most recent Fringe Five week (Wednesday through the following Tuesday), Mooney produced a walk-to-strikeout ratio above 1.0 (three walks, two strikeouts) while also homering. Over 115 total plate appearances now at Double-A Jacksonville, he’s recorded walk and strikeout rates of 13.9% and 11.3%, respectively, plus also a .141 isolated-power figure — roughly 30 points higher, that latter mark, than the Southern League average. What this entire paragaph ignores, too, is how Mooney was a member of the independent Atlantic League last season.

What this paragraph doesn’t ignore is footage of Mooney’s recent home run, provided here in technicolor video:

Jaime Schultz, RHP, Tampa Bay (Profile)
This represents Schultz’s third appearance this season among the Five proper. In his most recent start for Triple-A Durham, the right-hander produced a 6:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 23 batters over 5.1 innings, conceding a single run on a solo homer. A strong performance, that. Inarguably. What the remainder of this entry concerns isn’t the performance as a whole, however, but rather one plate appearance, specifically — one which has been reproduced in full below this paragraph. One notes that the duration of the film is 41 seconds. What else one notes is that it depicts five pitches over that span. The first pitch hits the catcher’s mitt at about the 0:01 mark. The second pitch, the 0:09 mark. So, about eight seconds between them. The third pitch, the 0:17 mark. About eight more seconds. The fourth pitch, at 0:26. So roughly nine seconds. The batter, Adonis Garcia, calls timeout briefly before the next pitch, which the catcher ultimately receives at about the 0:39 mark, rendering it the longest interval between pitches, at 13 seconds. Among qualied major-league starters, the fastest pace mark belongs to Wade Miley, at 17.9 seconds. Schultz’s pace here is nearly half that, about 9.5 seconds. Which, now this concludes a brief entry regarding Jaime Schultz.

Jason Vosler, 3B, Chicago NL (Profile)
Vosler was denoted as Cistulli’s Guy within Dan Farnsworth’s organizational list for the Cubs this offseason, and then included among the Next Five portion of this weekly exercise about a month ago. All of which is to say, his appearance here this week should neither surprise nor overwhelm the reader. Born in New York and a product of Northeastern University in Boston, Vosler is very much a product of cold-weather baseball. Despite that, he’s exhibited an advanced offensive approach even while playing at age-appropriate levels in the minors. This year has been no exception. Over 151 plate appearances for High-A Myrtle Beach, the 22-year-old has produced walk and strikeout rates of 9.9% and 11.3%, respectively, while also recording a .121 isolated-power mark — that is, roughly the league-average mark for the Carolina League. None of it is particularly glamorous, but the combination of plate discipline, modest power, defensive skill — it’s all promising taken collectively.

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

Greg Allen, CF, Cleveland (High-A Carolina League)
Yohander Mendez, LHP, Texas (High-A California League)
Yairo Munoz, 2B/SS, Oakland (Double-A Texas League)
Brandon Woodruff, RHP, Milwaukee (High-A Florida State League)
Chesny Young, 2B, Chicago NL (Double-A Southern 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 (which is to say, today). 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.

Fringe Five Scoreboard, 2016

	Name	Team	POS	FF	NF	PTS
1	Sherman Johnson	Angels	2B/3B	7	0	21
2	Tim Locastro	Dodgers	2B/SS	3	2	11
3	Jaime Schultz	Rays	RHP	3	1	10
4	Aaron Wilkerson	Red Sox	RHP	2	1	7
	Chih-Wei Hu	Rays	RHP	2	1	7
	Edison Frias	Astros	RHP	2	1	7
7	Ildemaro Vargas	D-backs	SS	2	0	6
	Joan Gregorio	Giants	RHP	2	0	6
9	Chesny Young	Cubs	2B	1	2	5
	Willians Astudillo	Braves	C	1	2	5