Archive for fringe

Back in 2019, Brad Johnson and I co-authored a weekly series called “Peripheral Prospects” that was extremely fun to write and (in my opinion) dropped some genuinely good nuggets on unloved fringe- and non-prospects. Because many of the players featured throughout the series did not debut in 2019 or even in 2020, I wanted to publish a post dedicated to keeping an eye on some of those circa-2019 peripheral prospects this past season.

That’s pretty much it. In the coming weeks, I’ll post lists of my favorite peripheral prospect hitters and pitchers for the 2021 season. Until then, let’s review how some of my favorite peripheral prospects from 2019 performed in 2021.

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Last offseason, over brunch at some restaurant in Phoenix, Brad Johnson and I, in coordination with FanGraphs’ Powers That Be, revived a recently deceased series about prospects. We had to attribute to it a new name, but its purpose remained steadfast: to identify intriguing but unheralded Minor League talent. This is the corner of fantasy baseball in which Brad and I thrive. I’m not one for series — I never thought I had any good ideas — but I had always wanted to do something like this, but for fantasy purposes.

Alas, Peripheral Prospects was born, a phoenix from the ashes. (A good metaphor, this, because in Phoenix we ate at a restaurant with ashtrays.) We published every Monday steadily for months until the grind of the season wore us down. Just because Cody Bellinger tailed off the in second half doesn’t mean we remember his 2019 season as a bust. I’d like to think our weak finish sullies not our fine season. Several WARs, at least.

Here, I’d like to highlight some of my favorite peripheral prospects of 2019. (Brad will separately highlight his own, for I can ascertain why he picked the players he picked but it is better that he articulate his rationale on his own terms.) Let’s not waste any more time. Here are my 10 favorite peripheral prospects, sorted ascending according to their appearance in the series.

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Anyone within arm’s reach of my Twitter account is so. bleeping. tired. of me talking about Mike Tauchman.

But I have to bring him up. Tauchman was literally the first Peripheral Prospect. He led off the inaugural post. It’s imperative we revisit our old friend, because guess what? He is the 7th-best fantasy hitter the last 30 days, per ESPN’s Player Rater.

Seventh-best. Not out of just Yankees, not out of just outfielders — out of all hitters. His recent success alone has made this entire series worth it.

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From last week’s edition of Peripheral Prospects:

Alex likes to weave word-things before naming names. I’m impatient. Let’s jump straight into the action.

Brad’s not wrong.

This is Peripheral Prospects. We seek to identify obscure future fantasy contributors. Let’s take the plunge. Only four this week, because I’m feeling picky.

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Yo! It’s been a hot minute (read: a month) since Brad or I published a Peripheral Prospects piece. Sometimes, life gets in the way. Such distinct absences aren’t so bad, after all — it allowed us a little more time for some of the season’s early conquests to flesh out in larger samples.

Around this time last year, I became enamored with a hitter about whom no one knew hardly anything at the time but of whom everyone has heard now: Jeff McNeil.

alonso @ AA: .315/.442/.574, 18.2% K, 16.0% BB
mcneil @ AA: .329/.405/.633, 9.7% K, 9.3% BB

I DON'T CARE IF HE'S 26, GREAT HITTERS HAVE BROKEN OUT AT 27 BEFORE

— Alex "Oxlade" Chamberlain (@DolphHauldhagen) June 14, 2018

At the time, Pete Alonso was slaughtering Double-A pitching. But so, too, was McNeil, with a strikeout rate (K%) below 10% — and a higher isolated power (ISO) than that of Alonso, the Mets’ premier power-oriented prospect. Between Double-A and Triple-A, Alonso finished with the higher ISO (.295 to .274), but McNeil, thanks to superior contact skills and (non-homer) batted ball efficacy, produced a wRC+ almost 20 points higher.

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Sorry for the late post, y’all. With Memorial Day, spending time with nieces and nephews, and then getting sick because of said nieces and nephews, it has been a bumpy week.

It’s a good mission statement, Brad. The mission statement in question: Peripheral Prospects seeks to identify obscure future fantasy contributors. That seems good, right? Let’s roll with it.

I missed last week with travel and then subsequent illness. There’s a lot of housekeeping to catch up on!

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Behold! Another installment of Peripheral Prospects, the low-price, off-brand fantasy baseball version of Fringe Five. Brad Johnson and I have brought something on the order of five minor leaguers per week who make us feel — like, really feel. These players tend to be unloved and unheralded but very much deserving of love and, uh, herald, not unlike the two authors of this series.

Some quick housekeeping, per usual:

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Another week, another installment of Peripheral Prospects. Through six weeks — three from me, three from esteemed colleague Brad Johnson — we have featured 26 different players with whom one or both of us express(es) some degree of infatuation.

The aim is simple: identify players who (1) have little to no hype as a prospect, having missed all major top-100 lists; (2) have not exhausted their rookie eligibility yet; and (3) are reasonably close to the majors, such that you’re not dreaming on talent that projects dubiously from the low minors. The rules are not hard-and-fast; it would be a shame to not mention certain players who we think exceed the credit they’ve been given. Accordingly, we will relax the constraints every now and then to make accommodations.

Before I dive into my weekly five, some quick housekeeping, per usual:
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This is the Fantasy Fringe Five, but is no longer named as such. This is the last time you’ll see Brad or me use that alliterative phrase to describe this series. And that’s it! Keepin’ it cryptic. This is now, until or unless we come up with something better, Peripheral Prospects. (We welcome recommendations! Leave a comment.)

That said, we might start steering this ship more deliberately in our own direction. In the spirit of Carson Cistulli’s series after which this is now loosely modeled, we will sometimes follow its self-imposed restrictions and other times elect to deviate from them — most probably, the one underlined below:

In light of same, eligibility for The Fringe Five will require (for the present, at least) the following:
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Consider this the low-hanging fruit Fantasy Fringe Five (FFF). I’ll endeavor to make future installments more fringy. However, given the circumstances — namely, that the season started and folks are already thinking about future waiver wire pursuits — I wanted to highlight some MLB-ready fringe prospects for your dynasty (and potential redraft) consumption. One (or more?) of these guys check the box of almost too good to not be top prospects, which, uh, I guess is the entire premise of this series.

But first, some housekeeping:

Very Important News

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