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 any updated list — such as the revised top 100 released last week by Baseball America — 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.

*****

Scott Kingery, 2B, Philadelphia (Profile)
By almost every measure, Kingery has been the best player in the Eastern League. Entering play Thursday, he’d produced both the best adjusted batting line and top speed score among the league’s 81 qualifiers. Those numbers have been supported by equally strong offensive indicators — offensive indicators which are, in turn, complemented by roughly average defense at second base.

In short, the selection of Kingery for this edition of the Five is embarrassing for the lack of imagination it has required. It would only be more embarrassing were the author not to have included Kingery here. As for what would be most embarrassing, this is a matter of some debate among thought leaders, although referring to oneself as a “thought leader” is a candidate for the distinction.

In conclusion, here’s one of Kingery’s three home runs from the past week — in this case, against the Blue Jays’ Double-A affiliate in Manchester, New Hampshire:

Brandon Lowe, 2B, Tampa Bay (Profile)
As noted in his debut appearance among the Five a couple weeks ago, the concern with Lowe hasn’t been his offensive ability — his bat profiles fine for second base — it’s whether he’d remain in the infield.

Roughly a third of the way through the minor-league season, Lowe’s defensive numbers at second are roughly average. That’s good. For the moment, however, it’s almost immaterial. Since last week’s edition of the Five, Lowe has recorded three homers in 18 plate appearances while producing a 4:3 walk-to-strikeout ratio. He owns the second-highest isolated-power figure in the Florida State League and has walked more often than he’s struck out (at rates of 15.8% and 14.2%, respectively). He essentially owns a corner outfielder’s offensive profile at the moment. While playing a reasonable second base.

Eric Stamets, SS, Cleveland (Profile)
It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Stamets had batted .385 over his most recent four games entering play Thursday. It would be accurate to say that he batted .385 were one to count only his home runs as hits. Consider, briefly, this collection of numbers: 13, 11, 5, and 0. Those denote the total at-bats, hits, home runs, and strikeouts that Stamets recorded during this improbable four-game stretch.

While somewhat obscure, Stamets has been invoked with surprising frequency in these pages. As the following screen cap from his FanGraphs page reveals, however, there’s been a distinct theme to the contexts in which he’s been invoked:

As for his defense, Stamets has received uniformly above-average to elite numbers by the available metrics. The addition of any substantive power to his profile would render him a very useful major-league player.

Nik Turley, LHP, Minnesota (Profile)
After appearing in last Friday’s edition of the Five, Turley proceeded to record two starts over the course of the past week, producing a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 12:1 against 45 batters over 11.1 total innings for Triple-A Rochester. He allowed five runs in the second of those starts — a loss against Rays affiliate Durham — but the more predictive numbers remain encouraging. Having already recorded an impossibly strong strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%) in the Double-A Southern League, Turley has now posted a merely above-average mark in the International League. Nevertheless, this represents a promising outcome for a pitcher who lost all sense of command last year and passed the latter half of the season with Somerset of the independent Atlantic League.

Turley continues to rely almost entirely on his fastball-curveball combination. Here are five examples of the latter pitch from his May 27 start against Pirates affiliate Indianapolis:

Ildemaro Vargas, 2B/SS, Arizona (Profile)
According to the EPA, the life of a common mosquito begins when the female lays her eggs on or near a source of water. The individual eggs hatch, and a larva emerges from each. After feeding in the water for some time, the larva develops into a pupa. As a pupa, the mosquito must remain in the water to avoid desiccation. Finally, the insect departs its pupal case and flies away, now in its final, adult form. It dies soon after.

This entire process lasts, on average, about two weeks — or, roughly the length of time that has passed since Ildemaro Vargas most recently struck out. In 11 games since May 21st, he’s recorded 47 plate appearances, hit two homers, and walked on three occasions. He hasn’t struck out, though. Vargas does continue to add real value with his infield defense. With his appearance this week among the Five, he reaches second place on the arbitrarily calculated scoreboard.

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

Vladimir Gutierrez, RHP, Cincinnati (High-A Florida State League)
Austin Hays, OF, Baltimore (High-A Carolina League)
Ryan Helsley, RHP, St. Louis (High-A Florida State League)
Nicky Lopez, SS, Kansas City (High-A Carolina League)
Cameron Perkins, OF, Philadelphia (Triple-A International 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.