The Fringe Five: Baseball’s Most Compelling Fringe Prospects

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.

Cameron Perkins, OF, Philadelphia (Profile)
Perkins appeared once among the Five last year and has been among the last players cut on multiple occasions since then. He has, at points, exhibited contact skills, power, and defensive promise — but rarely all three of them in concert. After roughly a month of games, though, he’s acquitted himself superlatively in each capacity. Consider: as a batter, he’s produced one of the top combinations of contact and power among qualifiers in the Triple-A International League.

The only two hitters who’ve bested Perkins by this measure are a first baseman (Hoskins) and major-league veteran (Tejada). One notes, also, that Perkins is the only player to record strikeout and ISO marks that are both a standard deviation better than average. The defensive returns are also positive. After occupying the corners almost exclusively as a younger professional, Perkins made roughly half his starts in center for Lehigh Valley last year. That trend has continued into 2017, and the methodologies used both by Baseball Prospectus and Clay Davenport suggest his center-field play is in the average range.

Michael Russell, 2B/SS, Tampa Bay (Profile)
When Russell appeared among the Five two weeks ago, he’d recorded strong offensive indicators but a slash line of just .154/.234/.308. In the fortnight since then, he’s continued to record strong offensive indicators. In this case, however, the product has been more representative of the process. Consider: over his most recent 34 plate appearances, Russell has posted a slash line of .281/.324/.500.

As noted in that earlier edition of the Five — and also within Eric Longenhagen’s Tampa Bay list, as part of which he was designated as Cistulli’s Guy — Russell features a very curious defensive profile. He basically split time last year between first base (41 starts) and shortstop (38), which positions represent opposite ends of the defensive spectrum. He’s occupied the more challenging area of that spectrum so far this season, making all but two of his appearances at either second, third, or short.

Max Schrock, 2B, Oakland (Profile)
Schrock recorded a slash line of just .205/.271/.205 over his first 11 games this year. Over second set of 11 games, however, he’s slashed a much more impressive .292/.333/.563. The difference is almost entirely a product of his batted-ball results.

Consider:

While Schrock has benefited from greater production on contact, his plate-discipline numbers (highlighted) over the two intervals are nearly identical. This is good because Schrock’s plate-discipline numbers are excellent — and inform a great deal of the present author’s considerable enthusiasm for Max Schrock.

Garrett Stubbs, C, Houston (Profile)
A senior sign out of USC, Stubbs was selected in the eighth round of the 2015 draft and received just a $100,000 bonus in a slot valued at $176,000. Whatever his virtues, power wasn’t considered to be among them. It wasn’t surprising, for example, that he recorded zero homers in his first season (roughly 150 plate appearances) of pro ball. He had, after all, hit only two of them in a four-year collegiate career.

What’s more surprising is how he hit 10 homers last year. Yes, the first six of those were tallied in the California League. Stubbs hit the latter four in the Double-A Texas League, however, which features a more subdued run environment. Stubbs has returned to the Texas League to begin this season and has already hit three homers — this, while striking out in fewer than 11% of his plate appearances.

Of course, with catchers there’s always the added difficulty of accounting for their contributions afield. A player doesn’t slide gently down the defensive spectrum from catcher; he crashes. Fortunately, both the reports and numbers are strong for Stubbs in this regard.

Jason Vosler, 3B, Chicago NL (Profile)
Vosler was designated as Cistulli’s Guy on Eric Longenhagen’s Cubs list this past offseason after receiving that same ominous distinction last year, as well. As a professional, he’s exhibited a skill set possessed by a number of the players who appear in this column: better-than-average contact ability, non-negligible power, and some capacity to provide defensive value.

Over the first month of his 2017 campaign, Vosler has continued producing his characteristically strong contact rates. He’s also recorded his typical marks at third base. As for the power, however, it has been something much better than “non-negligible.” After recording only three homers over 483 plate appearances last year while splitting time between High-A and Double-A, Vosler has already hit seven home runs in 2017. The result? The absolute highest isolated-power figure among qualified Double-A batters. Another result? Already a more optimistic Steamer projection.

Regard:

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

Beau Burrows, RHP, Detroit (High-A Florida State League)
Rhys Hoskins, 1B, Philadelphia (Triple-A International League)
Sherman Johnson, 2B/3B, Los Angeles AL (Triple-A Pacific Coast League)
Nicky Lopez, SS, Kansas City (High-A Carolina League)
Mike Tauchman, OF, Colorado (Triple-A Pacific Coast League)

Fringe Five Scoreboard
Here is the top-10 list of players who 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.